Replacing URL pattern for MySQL - php

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to use a regex search on a MySQL column to update some data.
The problem is I'm trying to rename part of a URL (i.e a directory).
The table looks something like this (although it's just an example, the actual data is arbitrary):
myTable:
| user_name | URL |
| ------------- |:---------------------------------------------------------:|
| John | http://example.com/path/to/Directory/something/something |
| Jane | http://example.com/path/to/Directory/something/else |
| Jeff | http://example.com/path/to/Directory/something/imgae.jpg |
I need to replace all the URLs that have "path/to/Directory/" to "path/to/anotherDirectory/" while keeping the rest of URL intact.
So the result after the update should look like this:
| user_name | URL |
| ------------- |:----------------------------------------------------------------:|
| John | http://example.com/path/to/anotherDirectory/something/something |
| Jane | http://example.com/path/to/anotherDirectory/something/else |
| Jeff | http://example.com/path/to/anotherDirectory/something/imgae.jpg |
At the moment, the only way I could figure out how to do it is using a combination of regex quires to check for the directory, and then loop over it and change the URL, like this:
$changeArr = $db->query("SELECT URL FROM myTable WHERE URL REGEXP 'path/to/Directory/.+'");
$URLtoChange = "path/to/Directory/";
$replace = "path/to/anotherDirectory/"
foreach ($changeArr as $URL) {
$replace = str_replace($URLtoChange, $replace, $URL);
$db->query("UPDATE myTable SET URL = :newURL WHERE URL = :URL", array("URL"=>$URL,"newURL"=>$replace));
}
This seems to work pretty well, however with such with a big table it can be pretty heavy on performance.
I was wondering if there's a more efficient way to do this? Perhaps with some sort of regex replace in a mySQL query.

Answer 1

Just use the REPLACE() function:
UPDATE myTable
SET URL = REPLACE(url, 'path/to/Directory/', 'path/to/anotherDirectory/')
WHERE URL LIKE '%path/to/Directory/%'