Question

the mysql table below has two columns. how do i select only those rows on which the first 3 alphabets of name of column A matches with first 3 alphabets of name of column B ?

      ColumnA              ColumnB
      nameA1                nameB1  
      nameA2                nameB2
      nameA3                nameB3
      nameA4                nameB4

Answer 1

SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE LEFT(ColumnA,3)=LEFT(ColumnB,3)

Unsure if I understood question properly. Do you also want to look contents of ColumnA to contains alphabet characters to avoid spaces and numbers or something else? If yes then you might want to add http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/regexp.html#operator_regexp to it.