The following comment was submitted to the MySQL Manual.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

From: erik <er...@powells.com> Regarding: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php?section=Regexp

something that they never get into in this documentation is how to effectively use it (period) in a SQL query with, oh, tables, and columns. :)

select users from table where first_name REGEXP "^[RBrb]ob";

will select all users that have names that start with rob/bob (first character case insensitive)

Those of us who use DBI + Perl or php can certainly make effective use of this.