Search for "whole word match" in MySQL

You can use REGEXP and the [[:<:]] and [[:>:]] word-boundary markers:

SELECT *FROM table WHERE keywords REGEXP '[[:<:]]rid[[:>:]]'

Update for 2020: (actually 2018+)

MySQL updated its RegExp-Engine in version 8.0.4, so you will now need to use the "standard" word boundary marker \b:

SELECT *FROM table WHERE keywords REGEXP '\\brid\\b'

Also be aware that you need to escape the backslash by putting a second backslash.

Found an answer to prevent the classic word boundary [[::<::]] clashing with special characters eg .@#$%^&*

Replace..

SELECT *FROM table WHERE keywords REGEXP '[[:<:]]rid[[:>:]]'

With this..

SELECT *FROM table WHERE keywords REGEXP '([[:blank:][:punct:]]|^)rid([[:blank:][:punct:]]|$)'

The latter matches (space, tab, etc) || (comma, bracket etc) || start/end of line. A more 'finished' word boundary match.

You can use like with the wildcard marker to catch the possibilities (at start, at end, in middle, and alone), something like this should suffice:

select blah blah blah where column like 'rid %' or column like '% rid' or column like '% rid %' or column = 'rid'