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Mastering Advanced SQL Techniques with MySQL

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Learn about methods to search full-text beyond pattern matching in MySQL.

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MySQL provides capabilities for matching regular expressions against some text. For example, using REGEXP_LIKE(), we can match the regular expression (ex|in)terior against the names of car parts as in our running example:

MySQL
-- Retrieve all exterior and interior car parts.
SELECT *
FROM CarPart
WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(name, '(ex|in)terior');

However, pattern matching only unfolds its full potential if applied to longer texts. One of the functions provided by MySQL, REGEXP_SUBSTR(), is particularly useful in this case. The function returns the nthn^{th} match of a regular expression in the specified text. While this concept is powerful, it is limited by the strictness of the regular expression syntax. That is, we cannot perform actual fuzzy ...