Try It Out 3) Using MySQL NOT LIKE operator example To find employees whose first names start with the letter T, end with the letter m, and contain any single character between e.g., Tom, Tim, you use the underscore (_) wildcard to construct the pattern as follows: SELECTįirstname LIKE 'T_m' Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) ( sql ) Try It Out 2) Using MySQL LIKE operator with an underscore( _ ) wildcard examples Lastname LIKE '%on%' Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) ( sql ) To check if a string contains a substring, you can use the percentage ( % ) wildcard at the beginning and the end of the substring.įor example, the following query uses the LIKE operator to find all employees whose last names contain the substring on: SELECT LastName LIKE '%on' Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) ( sql ) This example uses the LIKE operator to find employees whose last names end with the literal string on e.g., Patterson, Thompson: SELECT In this example, MySQL scans the whole employees table to find employees whose first names start with the letter a and are followed by any number of characters. This example uses the LIKE operator to find employees whose first names start with the letter a: SELECTįirstName LIKE 'a%' Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) ( sql ) We will use the following employees table from the sample database for the demonstration: 1) Using MySQL LIKE operator with the percentage (%) wildcard examples Let’s practice with some examples of using the LIKE operator. Typically, you’ll use the LIKE operator in the WHERE clause of the SELECT, DELETE, and UPDATE statement. When the pattern contains the wildcard character and you want to treat it as a regular character, you can use the ESCAPE clause.

The se_ matches any string starting with se and is followed by any character such as see and sea.

The underscore ( _ ) wildcard matches any single character.įor example, s% matches any string starting with the character s such as sun and six.

The percentage ( % ) wildcard matches any string of zero or more characters.

MySQL provides two wildcard characters for constructing patterns: Percentage % and underscore _. In this syntax, if the expression matches the pattern, the LIKE operator returns 1. Here’s the syntax of the LIKE operator: expression LIKE pattern ESCAPE escape_character Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) ( sql )

The LIKE operator is a logical operator that tests whether a string contains a specified pattern or not. Summary : in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the MySQL LIKE operator to query data based on a specified pattern.

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