Mysql – how to grep through a thesql database

For BSD or GNU grep you can use -B num to set how many lines before the match and -A num for the number of lines after the match.

grep -B 3 -A 2 foo README.txt

If you want the same number of lines before and after you can use -C num.

grep -C 3 foo README.txt

This will show 3 lines before and 3 lines after.

You can use GROUP_CONCAT:

SELECT person_id,
   GROUP_CONCAT(hobbies SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;

As Ludwig stated in his comment, you can add the DISTINCT operator to avoid duplicates:

SELECT person_id,
   GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT hobbies SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;

As Jan stated in their comment, you can also sort the values before imploding it using ORDER BY:

SELECT person_id, 
       GROUP_CONCAT(hobbies ORDER BY hobbies ASC SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;

As Dag stated in his comment, there is a 1024 byte limit on the result. To solve this, run this query before your query:

SET group_concat_max_len = 2048;

Of course, you can change 2048 according to your needs. To calculate and assign the value:

SET group_concat_max_len = CAST(
                     (SELECT SUM(LENGTH(hobbies)) + COUNT(*) * LENGTH(', ')
                           FROM peoples_hobbies
                           GROUP BY person_id) AS UNSIGNED);