Creating a MySQL SET's from a string

Question

Is there a way to create a set from a string of separated values in MySQL? For example:

\'the,quick,brown,fox\' => \'the\',\'quick\',\'brown\',\'fox\'

A

Answer 1

Tested on MySQL 5.1.41:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS n;
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE n AS
  SELECT -1 AS N UNION
  SELECT -2 UNION
  SELECT -3 UNION
  SELECT -4 UNION
  SELECT -5;

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS foo;
CREATE TABLE foo AS
  SELECT 'the,quick,brown,fox' AS csv;

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(foo.csv, ',', n.n), ',', 1) AS word
FROM foo JOIN n
  ON (LENGTH(REPLACE(foo.csv, ',', ''))-LENGTH(foo.csv) <= n.n+1);

Result:

+-------+
| word  |
+-------+
| fox   |
| brown |
| quick |
| the   |
+-------+