LIKE

Description

The LIKE operator is used in a WHERE clause to search for a specified pattern in a column.

There are two wildcards often used in conjunction with the LIKE operator:

  • The percent sign (%) represents zero, one, or multiple characters
  • The underscore sign (_) represents one, single character

Syntax

  1. > SELECT column1, column2, ...
  2. FROM table_name
  3. WHERE columnN LIKE pattern;

Examples

  1. > SELECT * FROM Customers
  2. WHERE CustomerName LIKE 'a%'; //The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName starting with "a"
  4. > SELECT * FROM Customers
  5. WHERE CustomerName LIKE '%a'; //The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName ending with "a"
  7. > SELECT * FROM Customers
  8. WHERE CustomerName LIKE '%or%'; //The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that have "or" in any position
  10. > SELECT * FROM Customers
  11. WHERE CustomerName LIKE '_r%'; //The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that have "r" in the second position
  13. > SELECT * FROM Customers
  14. WHERE CustomerName LIKE 'a__%'; //The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that starts with "a" and are at least 3 characters in length
  16. > SELECT * FROM Customers
  17. WHERE ContactName LIKE 'a%o'; //The following SQL statement selects all customers with a ContactName that starts with "a" and ends with "o"
  19. > SELECT * FROM Customers
  20. WHERE CustomerName NOT LIKE 'a%'; //The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that does NOT start with "a"