SQL query to check if a name begins and ends with a vowel

Question

I want to query the list of CITY names from the table STATION(id, city, longitude, latitude) which have vowels as both their first and last charact

Answer 1

Use a regular expression.

WHERE name REGEXP '^[aeiou].*[aeiou]$'

^ and $ anchor the match to the beginning and end of the value.

In my test, this won't use an index on the name column, so it will need to perform a full scan, as would

WHERE name LIKE 'a%a' OR name LIKE 'a%e' ...

I think to make it use an index you'd need to use a union of queries that each test the first letter.

SELECT * FROM table
WHERE name LIKE 'a%' AND name REGEXP '[aeiou]$'
UNION
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE name LIKE 'e%' AND name REGEXP '[aeiou]$'
UNION
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE name LIKE 'i%' AND name REGEXP '[aeiou]$'
UNION
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE name LIKE 'o%' AND name REGEXP '[aeiou]$'
UNION
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE name LIKE 'u%' AND name REGEXP '[aeiou]$'