Mysql regex match names with a maximum of two words

Question

i've being trying this without success:

select * from table where name regexp '^[:alpha:]{2}$'

pls help me?

Matt Ball · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-04 16:46:08Z

1

There probably needs to be some white space in between the two words, right? Try

select * from table where name regexp '^[[:alpha:]]+[[:space:]]*[[:alpha:]]*$'

[[:alpha:]]+ matches one or more letter characters
[[:space:]]* matches zero or more whitespace characters. (You may want to use [[:blank:]]* instead, to only match spaces and tabs, or [[ ]]* for spaces only.)
[[:alpha:]]* matches zero or more letter characters

So this should accept strings like

and reject strings like

answered Jun 4, 2011 at 14:00

Matt Ball

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1 Comment

thanks, but in order to make this work I had to use, for exemple, [[:alpha:]] instead of just [:alpha:]

Johan · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-04 14:06:58Z

0

select * from table where name regexp '^[:alpha:][:blank:]^[:alpha:]*$'

answered Jun 4, 2011 at 14:06

Johan

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That can't possibly work, since each bracket expression will only match a single character, and the regex contains two mandatory ^ anchors.