12.5.2 Regular Expressions

Table 12.9 String Regular Expression Operators

Name	Description
NOT REGEXP	Negation of REGEXP
REGEXP	Pattern matching using regular expressions
RLIKE	Synonym for REGEXP

A regular expression is a powerful way of specifying a pattern for 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 to support pattern-matching operations performed with the REGEXP operator in SQL statements.

This section summarizes, with examples, the special characters and constructs that can be used in MySQL for REGEXP operations. It does not contain all the details that can be found in Henry Spencer's regex(7) manual page. That manual page is included in MySQL source distributions, in the regex.7 file under the regex directory. See also Section 3.3.4.7, “Pattern Matching”.

Regular Expression Operators

• expr NOT REGEXP pat, expr NOT RLIKE pat

  This is the same as NOT (expr REGEXP pat).

• expr REGEXP pat, expr RLIKE pat

  Performs a pattern match of a string expression expr against a pattern pat. The pattern can be an extended regular expression, the syntax for which is discussed later in this section. Returns 1 if expr matches pat; otherwise it returns 0. If either expr or pat is NULL, the result is NULL. RLIKE is a synonym for REGEXP.

  The pattern need not be a literal string. For example, it can be specified as a string expression or table column.

  Note

  Because MySQL uses the C escape syntax in strings (for example, \n to represent the newline character), you must double any \ that you use in your REGEXP strings.

  REGEXP is not case sensitive, except when used with binary strings.

  mysql> SELECT 'Michael!' REGEXP '.*';
          -> 1
  mysql> SELECT 'new*\n*line' REGEXP 'new\\*.\\*line';
          -> 1
  mysql> SELECT 'a' REGEXP 'A', 'a' REGEXP BINARY 'A';
          -> 1  0
  mysql> SELECT 'a' REGEXP '^[a-d]';
          -> 1

  REGEXP and RLIKE use the character set and collations of the arguments when deciding the type of a character and performing the comparison. If the arguments have different character sets or collations, coercibility rules apply as described in Section 10.1.8.4, “Collation Coercibility in Expressions”.

  Warning

  The REGEXP and RLIKE operators work in byte-wise fashion, so they are not multibyte safe and may produce unexpected results with multibyte character sets. In addition, these operators compare characters by their byte values and accented characters may not compare as equal even if a given collation treats them as equal.

Syntax of Regular Expressions

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

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

As a more complex example, the regular expression 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 for the REGEXP operator may use any of the following special characters and 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 carriage return and newline).

  mysql> SELECT 'fofo' REGEXP '^f.*$';                    -> 1
  mysql> SELECT 'fo\r\nfo' REGEXP '^f.*$';                -> 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}

  {n} or {m,n} notation provides a more general way of writing regular expressions that match many occurrences of the previous atom (or “piece”) of the pattern. m and n are integers.

  • 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, a{n} matches exactly n instances of a. a{n,} matches n or more instances of a. a{m,n} matches m through n instances of a, inclusive.

  m and n must be in the range from 0 to RE_DUP_MAX (default 255), inclusive. If both m and n are given, m must be less than or equal to n.

  mysql> SELECT 'abcde' REGEXP 'a[bcd]{2}e';              -> 0
  mysql> SELECT 'abcde' REGEXP 'a[bcd]{3}e';              -> 1
  mysql> SELECT 'abcde' REGEXP 'a[bcd]{1,10}e';           -> 1

• [a-dX], [^a-dX]

  Matches any character that is (or is not, if ^ is used) either a, b, c, d or X. A - character between two other characters forms a range that matches all characters from the first character to the second. For example, [0-9] matches any decimal digit. To include a literal ] character, it must immediately follow the opening bracket [. To include a literal - character, it must be written first or last. Any character that does not have a defined special meaning inside a [] pair 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.]

  Within a bracket expression (written using [ and ]), matches the sequence of characters of that collating element. characters is either a single character or a character name like newline. The following table lists the permissible character names.

  The following table shows the permissible character names and the characters that they match. For characters given as numeric values, the values are represented in octal.

  Name	Character	Name	Character
  NUL	0	SOH	001
  STX	002	ETX	003
  EOT	004	ENQ	005
  ACK	006	BEL	007
  alert	007	BS	010
  backspace	'\b'	HT	011
  tab	'\t'	LF	012
  newline	'\n'	VT	013
  vertical-tab	'\v'	FF	014
  form-feed	'\f'	CR	015
  carriage-return	'\r'	SO	016
  SI	017	DLE	020
  DC1	021	DC2	022
  DC3	023	DC4	024
  NAK	025	SYN	026
  ETB	027	CAN	030
  EM	031	SUB	032
  ESC	033	IS4	034
  FS	034	IS3	035
  GS	035	IS2	036
  RS	036	IS1	037
  US	037	space	' '
  exclamation-mark	'!'	quotation-mark	'"'
  number-sign	'#'	dollar-sign	'$'
  percent-sign	'%'	ampersand	'&'
  apostrophe	'\''	left-parenthesis	'('
  right-parenthesis	')'	asterisk	'*'
  plus-sign	'+'	comma	','
  hyphen	'-'	hyphen-minus	'-'
  period	'.'	full-stop	'.'
  slash	'/'	solidus	'/'
  zero	'0'	one	'1'
  two	'2'	three	'3'
  four	'4'	five	'5'
  six	'6'	seven	'7'
  eight	'8'	nine	'9'
  colon	':'	semicolon	';'
  less-than-sign	'<'	equals-sign	'='
  greater-than-sign	'>'	question-mark	'?'
  commercial-at	'@'	left-square-bracket	'['
  backslash	'\\'	reverse-solidus	'\\'
  right-square-bracket	']'	circumflex	'^'
  circumflex-accent	'^'	underscore	'_'
  low-line	'_'	grave-accent	'`'
  left-brace	'{'	left-curly-bracket	'{'
  vertical-line	'|'	right-brace	'}'
  right-curly-bracket	'}'	tilde	'~'
  DEL	177

  mysql> SELECT '~' REGEXP '[[.~.]]';                     -> 1
  mysql> SELECT '~' REGEXP '[[.tilde.]]';                 -> 1

• [=character_class=]

  Within a bracket expression (written using [ and ]), [=character_class=] represents an equivalence class. It matches all characters with the same collation value, including itself. For example, if o and (+) are the members of an equivalence class, [[=o=]], [[=(+)=]], and [o(+)] are all synonymous. An equivalence class may not be used as an endpoint of a range.

• [:character_class:]

  Within a bracket expression (written using [ and ]), [:character_class:] represents a character class that matches all characters belonging to that class. The following table lists the standard class names. These names stand for the character classes defined in the ctype(3) manual page. A particular locale may provide other class names. A character class may not be used as an endpoint of a range.

  Character Class Name	Meaning
  alnum	Alphanumeric characters
  alpha	Alphabetic characters
  blank	Whitespace characters
  cntrl	Control characters
  digit	Digit characters
  graph	Graphic characters
  lower	Lowercase alphabetic characters
  print	Graphic or space characters
  punct	Punctuation characters
  space	Space, tab, newline, and carriage return
  upper	Uppercase alphabetic characters
  xdigit	Hexadecimal digit characters

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

• [[:<:]], [[:>:]]

  These markers stand for word boundaries. They match the beginning and end of words, respectively. A word is a sequence of word characters that is not preceded by or followed by word characters. A word character is an alphanumeric character in the alnum class or an underscore (_).

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

To use a literal instance of a special character in a regular expression, precede it by two backslash (\) characters. The MySQL parser interprets one of the backslashes, and the regular expression library interprets the other. For example, to match the string 1+2 that contains the special + character, only the last of the following regular expressions is the correct one:

mysql> SELECT '1+2' REGEXP '1+2';                       -> 0
mysql> SELECT '1+2' REGEXP '1\+2';                      -> 0
mysql> SELECT '1+2' REGEXP '1\\+2';                     -> 1