How to detect column that starts with special characters-CodePudding

I have a table with records like

dog
cat
mouse
:mouse
????cat

I'm trying select all values from the table but if the value starts with a special character then ignore it. In total, the list equates to 5 recors but should only return 3 since the last 2 starts with special characters.

What would be the best way to achieve this in my select statement?

CodePudding user response：

You could use a regular expression:

MySQL: SELECT * FROM table WHERE col REGEXP '^[a-zA-Z]'
PostgreSQL: SELECT * FROM table WHERE col ~ '^[a-zA-Z]'
Oracle: SELECT * FROM table WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(col, '^[a-zA-Z]')