Re: variable within regular expression

if you want to truley use regular expressions, change the query to $query = "SELECT " . $field . " FROM " . $table . " WHERE " . $variable . " REGEXP '".$con."'"; and drop the %'s, as you won't need them with a true REGEXP search. as far as the signle quotes those should be fine. but in this example i concatenated with -> . this could be nothing like what your looking for...and if so, sorry for th waste of bandwidth. jd Robbie Staufer <rstaufer@scd. To: Rob Bryant <rob@3jar.com> ucar.edu> cc: php-db@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] variable within regular expression 04/07/2003 01:19 PM Thanks for the help. Here's what I tried: // convert $con to regular expression $con = "%$con%"; $query = "SELECT " . $field . " FROM " . $table . " WHERE " . $variable . " LIKE '%{$con}%'"; I'm sure this is close to correct, but it's not working yet. The application itself works for numeric values for $con, and also for exact string values for $con. But if a partial string is entered for $con, the regex conversion part fails. Thanks, Robbie Staufer Rob Bryant wrote: >>-----Original Message----- >>From: Robbie Staufer [mailto:rstaufer@scd.ucar.edu] >>Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 3:59 PM >>To: php-db@lists.php.net >>Subject: [PHP-DB] variable within regular expression >> >> >> >>I have a php query form in which the user input must be converted to a >>regular expression before querying the db. Something like this >>pseudo code: >> $var = $_GET['usr-input']; >> $var = '%$var%'; >>SELECT * FROM table WHERE field LIKE $var. >> >>I can't find the right syntax to make this work. Does anyone know? >> >> >> > >I think maybe the single quotes don't interpolate the value of the variable. > >In other words, let's say $var is 'fubar': > >$var = '%$var%'; // -> is literally %$var% > >vs. > >$var = "%$var%"; // -> is %fubar% > >Anyway, here's some of my code that is similar to (what I think) you're >trying to do: > >if (isset($_GET['nstring'])) { > $nstring = addslashes($_GET['nstring']); > $squery = "SELECT * FROM lead > WHERE name LIKE '%{$nstring}%' > ORDER BY source, ref_by, date DESC"; > $sresult = mysql_query($squery); >} // etc... > > > > -- -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Robbie Staufer NCAR/SCD 1850 Table Mesa Dr. Rm. 42 Boulder, CO. 80305 (303) 497-1836