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LIKE

Grammar Description

The LIKE operator is used to search for specified patterns in columns in the WHERE clause.

There are two wildcards that are often used with the LIKE operator:

  • Percent sign % wildcard: means matching any character sequence (including empty character sequence).

    • %text: Matches a string ending with "text".
    • text%: Matches a string starting with "text".
    • %text%: Matches the string containing "text".

  • Underscore _ wildcard: means matching a single character.

    • te_t: Can match "text", "test", etc.

  • Other characters: The LIKE operator is case sensitive to other characters.

Grammar Structure

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

Example

drop table t1;
create table t1(a varchar(20));
insert into t1 values ​​('abc'), ('ABC'), ('abC');
select * from t1 where a like '%abC%';

mysql> select * from t1 where a like '%abC%';
+------+
| a |
+------+
| abC |
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)