how to use a like with a join in sql?

Question

I have 2 tables, say table A and table B and I want to perform a join, but the matching condition has to be where a column from A \'is like\' a column from B meaning that an

Answer 1

In MySQL you could try:

SELECT * FROM A INNER JOIN B ON B.MYCOL LIKE CONCAT('%', A.MYCOL, '%');

Of course this would be a massively inefficient query because it would do a full table scan.

Update: Here's a proof

create table A (MYCOL varchar(255));
create table B (MYCOL varchar(255));
insert into A (MYCOL) values ('foo'), ('bar'), ('baz');
insert into B (MYCOL) values ('fooblah'), ('somethingfooblah'), ('foo');
insert into B (MYCOL) values ('barblah'), ('somethingbarblah'), ('bar');
SELECT * FROM A INNER JOIN B ON B.MYCOL LIKE CONCAT('%', A.MYCOL, '%');
+-------+------------------+
| MYCOL | MYCOL            |
+-------+------------------+
| foo   | fooblah          |
| foo   | somethingfooblah |
| foo   | foo              |
| bar   | barblah          |
| bar   | somethingbarblah |
| bar   | bar              |
+-------+------------------+
6 rows in set (0.38 sec)