Comparing strings with one having empty spaces before while the other does not

Question

If I have to find a string name \"Akito\" and it lies in the table foo then following is the normal procedure,

select * from foo where `name = \         


        

Answer 1

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-comparison-functions.html says the following:

In particular, trailing spaces are significant, which is not true for CHAR or VARCHAR comparisons performed with the = operator:

mysql> SELECT 'a' = 'a ', 'a' LIKE 'a ';
+------------+---------------+
| 'a' = 'a ' | 'a' LIKE 'a ' |
+------------+---------------+
|          1 |             0 |
+------------+---------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Trailing means not leading. Those seem to be relevant.