SQL LIKE

The LIKE operator returns TRUE if its first text argument matches the wildcard pattern in its second argument.

Syntax

LIKE is commonly used in a WHERE clause to select rows based on a column matching a given string pattern.

SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE column LIKE pattern;

The pattern is made up of a string that includes the following wildcards:

• The percent character % matches zero to any number of arbitrary characters.
• The underscore character _ matches a single arbitrary character.

Examples

Select all rows where the column‘s value has “H” as the second character:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE column LIKE '_H%';

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The matches would include values like “THE” and “WHERE” but not “HOUSE”, or “BREATH”.

More examples are shown in the wildcards entry.