MySQL WHERE: how to write "!=" or "not equals"?

Question

I need to do this

DELETE FROM konta WHERE taken != ''

But != doesn't exist in mysql. Anyone know how to do this?

score 164 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 10 '12 at 20:53

164

DELETE FROM konta WHERE taken <> '';

answered Jul 10 '12 at 20:53

RolandoMySQLDBA

Mark Byers · Answer 2 · 2012-07-10T21:01:52.423

44

The != operator most certainly does exist! It is an alias for the standard <> operator.

Perhaps your fields are not actually empty strings, but instead NULL?

To compare to NULL you can use IS NULL or IS NOT NULL or the null safe equals operator <=>.

edited Jul 10 '12 at 21:01

answered Jul 10 '12 at 20:56

Mark Byers

Eh, I can see where the `NULL` is going (+1), but it seems odd to want to delete *not empty* or NULL .. – Jul 10 '12 at 20:57

score 13 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 27 '15 at 06:06

You may be using old version of Mysql but surely you can use

 DELETE FROM konta WHERE taken <> ''

But there are many other options available. You can try the following ones

DELETE * from konta WHERE strcmp(taken, '') <> 0;

DELETE * from konta where NOT (taken = '');

3 Answers3