Search for “whole word match” in MySQL [duplicate] - mysql

Question

This question already has answers here:
Whole word matching with dot characters in MySQL
(5 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
I want search the exact word using select query in mysql
eg: My table column content
"This is a sample mail to test Auto Decline Invitation."
Qry:
SELECT * FROM `test` where text REGEXP '[[:<:]]Invitation.[[:>:]]'
In above example i need to select all records match with 'Invitation.'

Answer 1

Instead of using REGEXP, you could also use the LIKE pattern matching operator.
A sample query could be:
SELECT * FROM `test` WHERE `text` LIKE '%Invitation.%';
Edit
Otherwise, if LIKE doesn't match your requirements, you can of course use REGEXP.
For a REGEXP (MySQL 5.7) expression, you'll want to use (mentioned by Wiktor):
SELECT * FROM `test` WHERE `text` REGEXP '[[:<:]]Invitation[.]';
For a REGEXP (MySQL 8.0) expression, you'll want to use:
SELECT * FROM `test` WHERE `text` REGEXP '\\bInvitation\\.';
The [[:<:]] & [[:>:]], and \b operators offer similar functionality for their boundaries. MySQL 5.7 is a little bit more explicit, as you can see per the documentation here at the bottom of the page. With MySQL 8.0, it supports the International Components for Unicode (ICU), as opposed to 5.7 that uses Henry Spencer's implementation for regular expressions.
From the MySQL 8.0 docs:
MySQL implements regular expression support using International Components for Unicode (ICU), which provides full Unicode support and is multibyte safe. (Prior to MySQL 8.0.4, MySQL used Henry Spencer's implementation of regular expressions, which operates in byte-wise fashion and is not multibyte safe.
If you do a search on this documentation page for \b, you'll see some clarification between the difference of ICU vs. Spencer regular expression handling:
The Spencer library supports word-beginning and word-end boundary markers ([[:<:]] and [[:>:]] notation). ICU does not. For ICU, you can use \b to match word boundaries; double the backslash because MySQL interprets it as the escape character within strings.
Bit of a learning experience for me too, thanks Wiktor!