MySQL – Select rows from a table when a field starts with a number

A common request is how to select records from a table when a specific field starts with a number. This request often is used when searching free-form text fields where the fields were used to provide an answer field to a question.

The simplest way to attack this is by using a regular expression. For example:

SELECT * FROM BadlyDesignedTable WHERE AnswerColumn regexp ‘^[0-9]+’;

or
SELECT * FROM BadlyDesignedTable WHERE AnswerColumn RLIKE ‘^[0-9]+’;

Regex and RLIKE are compatible keywords that both represent regular expression matching.

The regex is described as follows :

^    – Start anchor, used to ensure the pattern matches start of the string.
[    – Start of character class.
0-9  – Any digit
]    – End of character class

• ← Topgun Days by Dave “Bio” Baranek – The Truth Behind Topgun and Top Gun
• MySQL – A simple script to truncate all MySQL tables in a Database →