MySQL select fields containing leading or trailing whitespace
SELECT *
FROM
`foo`
WHERE
(name LIKE ' %')
OR
(name LIKE '% ')
As documented under The CHAR
and VARCHAR
Types:
All MySQL collations are of type
PADSPACE
. This means that allCHAR
andVARCHAR
values in MySQL are compared without regard to any trailing spaces.
In the definition of the LIKE
operator, the manual states:
In particular, trailing spaces are significant, which is not true for
CHAR
orVARCHAR
comparisons performed with the=
operator:
As mentioned in this answer:
This behavior is specified in SQL-92 and SQL:2008. For the purposes of comparison, the shorter string is padded to the length of the longer string.
From the draft (8.2 <comparison predicate>):
If the length in characters of X is not equal to the length in characters of Y, then the shorter string is effectively replaced, for the purposes of comparison, with a copy of itself that has been extended to the length of the longer string by concatenation on the right of one or more pad characters, where the pad character is chosen based on CS. If CS has the NO PAD characteristic, then the pad character is an implementation-dependent character different from any character in the character set of X and Y that collates less than any string under CS. Otherwise, the pad character is a <space>.
One solution:
SELECT * FROM Foo WHERE CHAR_LENGTH(field) != CHAR_LENGTH(TRIM(field))