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. -- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName starting with "a"
  2. mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
  3. WHERE CustomerName LIKE 'a%';
  5. -- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName ending with "a"
  6. mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
  7. WHERE CustomerName LIKE '%a';
  9. -- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that have "or" in any position
  10. mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
  11. WHERE CustomerName LIKE '%or%';
  13. -- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that have "r" in the second position
  14. mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
  15. WHERE CustomerName LIKE '_r%';
  17. -- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that starts with "a" and are at least 3 characters in length
  18. mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
  19. WHERE CustomerName LIKE 'a__%';
  21. mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
  22. WHERE ContactName LIKE 'a%o'; -- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a ContactName that starts with "a" and ends with "o"
  24. -- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that does NOT start with "a"
  25. mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
  26. WHERE CustomerName NOT LIKE 'a%';