Word boundaries in MySQL regular expressions
In regular expressions you can use the zero-width pattern \b to match the beginning or end of a word:
note.title =~ /\bfoo\b/
Unfortunately \b is not available in MySQL. You can use [[:<:]] and [[:>:]] to match the beginning and end of a word instead:
SELECT * FROM notes WHERE title REGEXP "[[:<:]]foo[[:>:]]"
These markers are unique to MySQL and not available in Ruby regular expressions.
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