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%';
The matches would include values like “THE” and “WHERE” but not “HOUSE”, or “BREATH”.
More examples are shown in the wildcards entry.