title: Storing multiple values in a single cell in MySQL
body: <p>I'm storing multiple numbers in a MySQL cell by using a delimiter (eg "1,5,10") and the TEXT datatype.</p>
  
  <p>How do I perform lookups like this?</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE MultiVals CONTAINS "5"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And lastly, is this the preferred approach to store such values? I'm using this like a linker table, to link certain rows to multiple other rows in another table (via IDs). Since I'm trying to minimize the filesize of the DB, I thought this would be a more compact approach to linking instead of using another table like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Person ID       Product ID
  -----------     -----------
  3               1
  3               2
  3               3
  7               5
  7               7
  </code></pre>