In my view I have an alphabet based selector, to select manufacturers by the first letter of their name. I got that part working. But I have manufacturers whose name starts with a number, for example 3M, or 3DLabs. In the view I have the character "#" to group all those. What should my query/find method look like to retrieve all names that don't start with an alphabet letter.
+2
A:
You probably want to use a Regular Expression.
What language are you using?
Here is the SQL2005 version:
select *
from myTable
where myField like '[^a-z]%'
Mitchell Gilman
2008-12-31 19:08:29
I'm using RubyOnRails+mysql. Actually, what I am looking for is the negation of what you wrote; when the number sign is selected, I want to show all names that don't start with the alphabet letters, that is I want to show all names that start with a number.
2008-12-31 19:16:18
On SQL2005 that show the names that do NOT start with a letter. (The ^ makes the regex negative). You could also do like '[0-9]%' to only show numbers (and no special characters). Sorry, I don't know enough about mysql to know if my code also works there. :-(
Mitchell Gilman
2008-12-31 19:29:34
+1
A:
I think I got it
SELECT * FROM manufacturers WHERE ( name REGEXP '^[0-9]') ORDER BY name
Was just posting something similar: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/regexp.html
hometoast
2008-12-31 19:40:12