I've got a rather strange question. I'm trying to build a variant of an anti-spam database, and what I'd like to do with it is to store regular expressions (e.g. V?agra for Viagra) and be able to query the database via the regular expression.

e.g. "Select Count (Pattern_ID) as Match_Count from Spam_Patterns where Pattern Like '%Viagra%'" would generate the V?agra as a match.

Is there any way to do it this way, or do I have to do it the other way around (i.e. use regular expressions in my query?)

Thanks.

Select Count(*) Where Pattern Like @Pattern

@Pattern = 'V_iagra'

Sorry, parameters in Access are [just an unknown field name].

MSDN says:

There are a number of wildcard characters to choose from, and the following table details what they are and what they can be used for.
Wildcard character Description * or % Zero or more characters ? or _ (underscore) Any single character # Any single digit (0-9) [charlist] Any single character in charlist [!charlist] Any single character not in charlist

Note The % and _ (underscore) wildcard characters should be used only through the Jet OLE DB provider and ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO) code. They will be treated as literal characters if they are used though the Access SQL View user interface or Data Access Objects (DAO) code.

I don't think Access supports regular expressions, but has a baby version built in.

Dag, that was supposed to be a table.

* or % = Zero or more characters
? or _ (underscore) = Any single character
# = Any single digit (0-9)
[charlist] = Any single character in charlist
[!charlist] = Any single character not in charlist

Thanks, dude. I'll have a poke at that later on if the tack I'm on now doesn't play out.