How to use LIKE?

LIKE operator is used to search for patterns in string.
It is used with 2 wild-cards:

• _ means just a character
  
• % means any number of character (it also means empty word)
  

Example: Select all employee records where employee name start with 'a' character and rest can be any thing.

SELECT * FROM tableEmployees WHERE employeeName LIKE 'a%'

Select all employee records where employee name 1st character is 'a', 2nd character is any thing, 3rd character is 'b' and the rest is any character sequence.

SELECT * FROM tableEmployees WHERE employeeName LIKE 'a_b%'

If we need to find '_' or '%' in a string we must put escape character before them.

Example: Select all image records from images table where image name start with 'IMAGE_' and the rest is anything.


SELECT * FROM images WHERE employeePhoto LIKE 'IMAGEID\_%' ESCAPE '\'