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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

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

Examples

-- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName starting with "a"
mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE CustomerName LIKE 'a%';

-- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName ending with "a"
mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE CustomerName LIKE '%a';

-- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that have "or" in any position
mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE CustomerName LIKE '%or%';

-- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that have "r" in the second position
mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE CustomerName LIKE '_r%';

-- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that starts with "a" and are at least 3 characters in length
mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE CustomerName LIKE 'a__%';

mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE ContactName LIKE 'a%o'; -- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a ContactName that starts with "a" and ends with "o"

-- The following SQL statement selects all customers with a CustomerName that does NOT start with "a"
mysql> SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE CustomerName NOT LIKE 'a%';