How do I search and replace specific chars at the beginning of a string in MySQL?

For this, you can use INSERT(). Let us first create a table −

mysql> create table DemoTable    -> (    -> ZipCode varchar(200)    -> ); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.47 sec)

Insert some records in the table using insert command −

mysql> insert into DemoTable values('9030'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.15 sec) mysql> insert into DemoTable values('3902'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.14 sec) mysql> insert into DemoTable values('9083'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.20 sec) mysql> insert into DemoTable values('9089'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.13 sec)

Display all records from the table using select statement −

mysql> select *from DemoTable;

Output

+---------+ | ZipCode | +---------+ | 9030    | | 3902    | | 9083    | | 9089    | +---------+ 4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Following is the query to search and replace chars at the beginning of a string. Here, we are working only on the records with ZipCode beginning from 90 −

mysql> update DemoTable set ZipCode=INSERT(ZipCode, 1, 2, 'Country-AUS-')    -> where ZipCode LIKE '90%'; Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.26 sec) Rows matched: 3  Changed: 3 Warnings: 0

Let us check table records once again −

mysql> select *from DemoTable;

Output

+----------------+ | ZipCode        | +----------------+ | Country-AUS-30 | | 3902           | | Country-AUS-83 | | Country-AUS-89 | +----------------+ 4 rows in set (0.00 sec)