Using regex in mysql query

28 May 2015

Disclaimer: I don’t recommend to use this in production since it cause heavy performance drop. As I read, using REGEX in query is 10x slower than LIKE operator.


Recently I had a requirement to filter out records which matches a particular pattern. Usually in such cases I retrive the records and run filter in the program. This time I was curious to know whether there is an alternative way. If I can filter using a pattern in MySQL, it will be easy for me. Thus I came to know about REGEX in MySQL.

So now I my query looks like

SELECT * FROM messages WHERE nick_name REGEXP '[a-z]0\.[0-9]+';

to get records matching my regex or I can use NOT REGEX to filter out.

SELECT * FROM messages WHERE nick_name NOT REGEXP '[a-z]0\.[0-9]+';

As I said in disclaimer there is a huge performance drawback for REGEX when compared to LIKE operator. The REGEX operator is 10x slower than LIKE operator.

If you find my work helpful, You can buy me a coffee.