Re: Distinct Partial Matches: RegExp

thanks for the info. didn't know this. :). i'll be googling how this is done. :D and perhaps post back a solution to your problem kevin, if i find one :). On 8/31/06, Micah Stevens <micah@raincross-tech.com> wrote:

You can do regular expression matching in MySQL and I think a few other servers too, but that's not the same as regular expression replacement like you can do with PHP.. It just returns a boolean true/false depending on whether or not the match works. -Micah J R wrote: i'm a bit confused. if i'm getting you right heres my 2 cents: first you do sql query using DISTINCT when the result are returned to you, you can then run thru the result array using preg_replace. heres an example:

$aVar    = array(
       'animal-dog-5',
       'animal-dog-3',
       'animal-cat-1',
       'animal-cat-22',
       'animal-bird-5',
       );

$aResult    = array();

foreach ($aVar as $value) {

   $tmp    = preg_replace('/-\d*$/', '', $value);
   $aResult[$tmp]    = $tmp;

// if you want to conserve a bit of resources asign NULL;

   // $aResult[$tmp]    = NULL;

} var_dump($aResult); hth, john p.s. i'm not sure if it is possible to use regular expression in a sql query. can anyone comment on this? thanks. On 8/31/06, Kevin Murphy <php@stubborndonkey.com> wrote:

Well, its not really a search.... that would be way easier. :-) What I'm looking for is a query that will give me the complete list of items that are distinct, minus the last number after the last hyphen. animal-dog animal-cat animal-bird -- Kevin Murphy Webmaster: Information and Marketing Services Western Nevada Community College www.wncc.edu 775-445-3326 On Aug 30, 2006, at 4:34 PM, Micah Stevens wrote:

Select DISTINCT area from table like '$searchterms%'; In SQL, you can use the 'LIKE' keyword along with the '%' and '_' wildcards.. '_' is one character, '%' is any number of chars. -Micah Kevin Murphy wrote:

This might be really easy, but I'm just not sure how to write this query and my searching on google isn't finding me things, probably because I am searching for the wrong terms. I have a bunch of records where the "area" column is like: animal-dog-5 animal-dog-3 animal-cat-1 animal-cat-22 animal-bird-5 What I want to do is run a distinct query on just the part previous to the number. animal-dog animal-cat animal-bird So in other words, something like this, but I am not sure if this is the right way to go: $query = "SELECT DISTINCT area FROM table WHERE REGEXP 'anynumberofletters dash anynumberofletters dash '" Of course, I could be barking up the wrong tree with the REGEXP thing. Anyone care to point me in the right direction? --Kevin Murphy Webmaster: Information and Marketing Services Western Nevada Community College www.wncc.edu 775-445-3326 --Kevin Murphy Webmaster: Information and Marketing Services Western Nevada Community College www.wncc.edu 775-445-3326

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