how to search for exact string in mysql

Question

I'm trying to search for an exact match of a string in mysql. The string is 'nrew'. But when I do the queries below, I still get a result:

SELECT UserID FROM sys_users WHERE UserID='NREW'
SELECT UserID FROM sys_users WHERE UserID='NrEw'

Please help.

Answer 1

SELECT UserID FROM sys_users WHERE BINARY UserID='NREW'

Answer 2

The default collation which MySQL uses to make comparisons is case insensitive. You need to specify a case sensitive collation or binary. You can either do this when creating the column, or in the query.

For example:

SELECT UserID FROM sys_users WHERE UserID='NREW' COLLATE latin1_bin

The proper collation depends on your character set. For latin1, the default, you can use latin1_bin. For utf8, utf8_bin.