Effect of Regexp

[pankajit09]

SELECT 'a' REGEXP '^[a-d]';

Does REGEXP in a SQL slows down the execution ?

Also what is the difference between REGEXP and RLIKE ?

[Atli]

Hi.

Regular expressions are a lot more complex than the simple searches, like MySQL's WHERE LIKE syntax.
Because of that, they will usually perform somewhat slower.

They can be highly useful in certain situations, but if you can manage without them I would advise you to do so.

RLIKE is a synonym for REGEXP.
See Regular Expressions in the MySQL manual.