SQL Queries....

[cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org]

> I've been working with some SQL driven sights. Mostly Postgres and some 
> MySQL, However I've never had to do this before:
> 
> Does anyone know how to select only records that start with a certain 
> letter?
> 
> I can easly select records that contain the letter and order them 
> properly, but that dosn't help much. :(

In standard SQL, the "wildcards" are a little different from what you
are accustomed to:

 - The equivalent to "*" is "%"

 - The equivalent to "?" is "_"

 - You use single quotes to enclose strings, so use 'something'
   rather than "something".

PostgreSQL also supports, using the ~ operator, pretty full-scale
regular expressions.

So, you might have a query to look for people with names starting with
"B":

  select * from some_table where name like 'B%';

If you need case insensitivity, you might use:

  select * from some_table where lower(name) like 'b%';

To search for a field 3 characters long, you might try:
  select * from another_table where some_column like '___';
--
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