Use of wildcards in mysql table name

Question

The table names in my mysql database are dynamically generated. Is there some way to select data from tables which have a name matching a pattern? I guess it will look like:

select * from 'table_id_%'

Answer 1

No, you can't do that with MySQL. Tables in a query can't be dynamically specified - you have to build the list in your application (or do several single-table queries).