Mysql Like Syntax

Update: This answer covers the general error classification. For a more specific answer about how to best handle the OP's exact query, please see other answers to this question

In MySQL, you can't modify the same table which you use in the SELECT part.
This behaviour is documented at: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/update.html

Maybe you can just join the table to itself

If the logic is simple enough to re-shape the query, lose the subquery and join the table to itself, employing appropriate selection criteria. This will cause MySQL to see the table as two different things, allowing destructive changes to go ahead.

UPDATE tbl AS a
INNER JOIN tbl AS b ON ....
SET a.col = b.col

Alternatively, try nesting the subquery deeper into a from clause ...

If you absolutely need the subquery, there's a workaround, but it's ugly for several reasons, including performance:

UPDATE tbl SET col = (
  SELECT ... FROM (SELECT.... FROM) AS x);

The nested subquery in the FROM clause creates an implicit temporary table, so it doesn't count as the same table you're updating.

... but watch out for the query optimiser

However, beware that from MySQL 5.7.6 and onward, the optimiser may optimise out the subquery, and still give you the error. Luckily, the optimizer_switch variable can be used to switch off this behaviour; although I couldn't recommend doing this as anything more than a short term fix, or for small one-off tasks.

SET optimizer_switch = 'derived_merge=off';

Thanks to Peter V. Mørch for this advice in the comments.

Example technique was from Baron Schwartz, originally published at Nabble, paraphrased and extended here.

For MySQL 5.0.3 and higher, you can use BIT. The manual says:

As of MySQL 5.0.3, the BIT data type is used to store bit-field values. A type of BIT(M) enables storage of M-bit values. M can range from 1 to 64.

Otherwise, according to the MySQL manual you can use BOOL or BOOLEAN, which are at the moment aliases of tinyint(1):

Bool, Boolean: These types are synonyms for TINYINT(1). A value of zero is considered false. Non-zero values are considered true.

MySQL also states that:

We intend to implement full boolean type handling, in accordance with standard SQL, in a future MySQL release.

References: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/numeric-type-overview.html