G MySQL Regular Expressions

A regular expression (regex) is a powerful way of specifying a complex search.

MySQL uses Henry Spencer's implementation of regular expressions, which is aimed at conformance with POSIX 1003.2. MySQL uses the extended version.

This is a simplistic reference that skips the details. To get more exact information, see Henry Spencer's regex(7) manual page that is included in the source distribution. See section C Credits.

A regular expression describes a set of strings. The simplest regexp is one that has no special characters in it. For example, the regexp hello matches hello and nothing else.

Non-trivial regular expressions use certain special constructs so that they can match more than one string. For example, the regexp hello|word matches either the string hello or the string word.

As a more complex example, the regexp B[an]*s matches any of the strings Bananas, Baaaaas, Bs, and any other string starting with a B, ending with an s, and containing any number of a or n characters in between.

A regular expression may use any of the following special characters/constructs:

^

Match the beginning of a string.

mysql> SELECT "fo\nfo" REGEXP "^fo$";           -> 0
mysql> SELECT "fofo" REGEXP "^fo";              -> 1

$

Match the end of a string.

mysql> SELECT "fo\no" REGEXP "^fo\no$";         -> 1
mysql> SELECT "fo\no" REGEXP "^fo$";            -> 0

.

Match any character (including newline).

mysql> SELECT "fofo" REGEXP "^f.*";             -> 1
mysql> SELECT "fo\nfo" REGEXP "^f.*";           -> 1

a*

Match any sequence of zero or more a characters.

mysql> SELECT "Ban" REGEXP "^Ba*n";             -> 1
mysql> SELECT "Baaan" REGEXP "^Ba*n";           -> 1
mysql> SELECT "Bn" REGEXP "^Ba*n";              -> 1

a+

Match any sequence of one or more a characters.

mysql> SELECT "Ban" REGEXP "^Ba+n";             -> 1
mysql> SELECT "Bn" REGEXP "^Ba+n";              -> 0

a?

Match either zero or one a character.

mysql> SELECT "Bn" REGEXP "^Ba?n";              -> 1
mysql> SELECT "Ban" REGEXP "^Ba?n";             -> 1
mysql> SELECT "Baan" REGEXP "^Ba?n";            -> 0

de|abc

Match either of the sequences de or abc.

mysql> SELECT "pi" REGEXP "pi|apa";             -> 1
mysql> SELECT "axe" REGEXP "pi|apa";            -> 0
mysql> SELECT "apa" REGEXP "pi|apa";            -> 1
mysql> SELECT "apa" REGEXP "^(pi|apa)$";        -> 1
mysql> SELECT "pi" REGEXP "^(pi|apa)$";         -> 1
mysql> SELECT "pix" REGEXP "^(pi|apa)$";        -> 0

(abc)*

Match zero or more instances of the sequence abc.

mysql> SELECT "pi" REGEXP "^(pi)*$";            -> 1
mysql> SELECT "pip" REGEXP "^(pi)*$";           -> 0
mysql> SELECT "pipi" REGEXP "^(pi)*$";          -> 1

{1}

{2,3}

The is a more general way of writing regexps that match many occurrences of the previous atom.

a*

Can be written as a{0,}.

a+

Can be written as a{1,}.

a?

Can be written as a{0,1}.

To be more precise, an atom followed by a bound containing one integer i and no comma matches a sequence of exactly i matches of the atom. An atom followed by a bound containing one integer i and a comma matches a sequence of i or more matches of the atom. An atom followed by a bound containing two integers i and j matches a sequence of i through j (inclusive) matches of the atom. Both arguments must be in the range from 0 to RE_DUP_MAX (default 255), inclusive. If there are two arguments, the second must be greater than or equal to the first.

[a-dX]

[^a-dX]

Matches any character which is (or is not, if ^ is used) either a, b, c, d or X. To include a literal ] character, it must immediately follow the opening bracket [. To include a literal - character, it must be written first or last. So [0-9] matches any decimal digit. Any character that does not have a defined meaning inside a [] pair has no special meaning and matches only itself.

mysql> SELECT "aXbc" REGEXP "[a-dXYZ]";         -> 1
mysql> SELECT "aXbc" REGEXP "^[a-dXYZ]$";       -> 0
mysql> SELECT "aXbc" REGEXP "^[a-dXYZ]+$";      -> 1
mysql> SELECT "aXbc" REGEXP "^[^a-dXYZ]+$";     -> 0
mysql> SELECT "gheis" REGEXP "^[^a-dXYZ]+$";    -> 1
mysql> SELECT "gheisa" REGEXP "^[^a-dXYZ]+$";   -> 0

[[.characters.]]

The sequence of characters of that collating element. The sequence is a single element of the bracket expression's list. A bracket expression containing a multi-character collating element can thus match more than one character, for example, if the collating sequence includes a ch collating element, then the regular expression [[.ch.]]*c matches the first five characters of chchcc.

[=character_class=]

An equivalence class, standing for the sequences of characters of all collating elements equivalent to that one, including itself. For example, if o and (+) are the members of an equivalence class, then [[=o=]], [[=(+)=]], and [o(+)] are all synonymous. An equivalence class may not be an endpoint of a range.

[:character_class:]

Within a bracket expression, the name of a character class enclosed in [: and :] stands for the list of all characters belonging to that class. Standard character class names are:

Name	Name	Name
alnum	digit	punct
alpha	graph	space
blank	lower	upper
cntrl	print	xdigit

These stand for the character classes defined in the ctype(3) manual page. A locale may provide others. A character class may not be used as an endpoint of a range.

mysql> SELECT "justalnums" REGEXP "[[:alnum:]]+";       -> 1
mysql> SELECT "!!" REGEXP "[[:alnum:]]+";               -> 0

[[:<:]]

[[:>:]]

These match the null string at the beginning and end of a word respectively. A word is defined as a sequence of word characters which is neither preceded nor followed by word characters. A word character is an alnum character (as defined by ctype(3)) or an underscore (_).

mysql> SELECT "a word a" REGEXP "[[:<:]]word[[:>:]]";      -> 1
mysql> SELECT "a xword a" REGEXP "[[:<:]]word[[:>:]]";     -> 0

mysql> SELECT "weeknights" REGEXP "^(wee|week)(knights|nights)$"; -> 1

User Comments

It seems like a super useful way for a REGEXP like
term to work would be as such:

select 'foobar' REGEXP2 'fo(..)ar'; -> 'ba'

So, rather than return the truth/falseness of the
regexp, return the first parenthesized match or say,
NULL.

Seems like this could be useful

Are you sure it works it gives nothins on my mysql 4.1.0 under windows.
It will be so usefull !
Are your query well paste here ?

Thanks.

If you are searching for literal parentheses, you have to enclose each parenthesis in brackets; otherwise, mySQL thinks they're part of the regular expression syntax. For instance:

WHERE phone REGEXP '(435)';

would return any phone numbers that have the sequence 435 in any part of the string, such as "1(801)555-4351". However:

WHERE phone REGEXP '[(]435[)]';

would return only phone numbers with (435), such as "1(435)555-5555".

There really should be a "see also" link to Section 3.3.4.7 "Pattern Matching" (http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Pattern_matching.html) somewhere on this doc page. I couldn't get REGEXP to work right for me till I found a very important note on the Pattern Matching page regarding CASE-SENSITIVITY:

"Prior to MySQL Version 3.23.4, REGEXP is case sensitive.... From MySQL 3.23.4 on, to force a REGEXP comparison to be case sensitive, use the BINARY keyword to make one of the strings a binary string."

So I finally got my REGEXP (which searches for any uppercase letters in a user id) to work correctly:

mysql> SELECT * FROM user WHERE id REGEXP BINARY "[A-Z]";

It's far beyond the scope of this documentation to dwell on all the gory details of regular expressions. Should you have any doubts, please refer to a good book on the subject like "Mastering Regular Expressions" (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/). References online include http://sitescooper.org/tao_regexps.html and http://www.regexlib.com/

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