Need to count distinct number of occurances in a non-normalizedfield

[Tom Manners]

I have a field that contains multiple values seperated by |*|

So the field looks like this name1|*|name2|* |name3

I need to count how many unique,or distinct name are in that field and return a total number. So, the above example would return 3 total names.

So by way of continuing explanation:
If the first row contained: name1|*|name2
The second row contained: name1|*|name2
The resulting querry would return a total of 2 distinct names.

Hope this makes sense and I HOPE someone can help me.

I know this isn't normalized but it is the database I was dealt.

Tom

[johny10151981]

first of all I dont think mysql has any function that would let you break a string into small pieces.

how about using other programming language like C or php.

if it is php, then its very easy but if it is C then possible but not easy..