How do I use a regex in my MySQL query?

Question

I want to search for a word+number if that SQL returns nothing, I will default it to a full LIKE search, is there any way to implement regex like this in SQL?

Example:

$queryWord = potato

• It should first search for potato+somenumber up to 4 digits
• It should return all matches with potato+somenumber
• If that fails, it defaults to a full search with wildcards on both sides

Like this:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM `words` WHERE `searchWord` LIKE '$queryWord+number';";
$result = mysqli_query($con, $sql);

if (mysqli_num_rows($result) == 0) {

    $sql =  "SELECT * FROM `words` WHERE `searchWord` LIKE '%$queryWord%';"; // full search
    $result = mysqli_query($con, $sql);
    // etc etc

}

Answer 1

Just change your query to this:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM `words` WHERE `searchWord` REGEXP '$queryWord(\d{1,4})';";

and here is a Rubular that proves the Regex.