SQL WHERE LIKE Statement with example

SQL WHERE LIKE Statement

• WHERE LIKE determines if a character string matches a pattern.
• Use WHERE LIKE when only a fragment of a text value is known.
• WHERE LIKE supports two wildcard match options: % and  _ .

The SQL WHERE LIKE syntax

The general syntax is:

1. SELECT column-names FROM table-name WHERE column-name LIKE value

Optional Wildcard characters allowed in 'value' are % (percent) and _ (underscore).
  A % matches any string with zero or more characters.
  An _ matches any single character.

SQL WHERE LIKE Examples

 1) any string with zero or more characters(%)

 mysql> select name from person where name like 's%';
+-----------------+
| name            |
+-----------------+
| subham ball     |
| sajal           |
| sourav biswas   |
| sajal           |
| shantanu biswas |
| sudip saha      |
+-----------------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

2) matches any single character(_)

mysql> select name from person where name like 'saja_';
+-------+
| name  |
+-------+
| sajal |
| sajal |
+-------+
2 rows in set (0.01 sec)