Deleting an item from a list

[Dean C]

I had a quick flick through MySQL's string functions here and the only thing I found close to what I want to do is the replace function.

I have a field in my table which is numbers seperated by commas. An example would be:

1,2,3,4,5,6

If I wanted to update that field with one value removed is there a MySQL function to remove an item from a list, kind of the opposite to how FIND_IN_SET locates an item in a list ?

[r937]

not that i know of

i think you'd have to use REPLACE()

you'd have to be very careful, and make sure that when you remove 3, you don't accidentally remove 13 as well

[Dean C]

Ah i'll just do all the work using PHP then. Although a function which did this would be a welcome addition to MySQL