MySQL Like Clause

In this tutorial you will learn about the MySQL Like Clause and its application with practical example.

The LIKE operator is used in a WHERE clause to search for a specified pattern of string in a column value, WHERE clause with equal sign (=) works fine where we want to do an exact match. Like if “emp_name = ‘deepmala'”. But there may be a requirement where we want to filter out all the results where emp_name should contain “mala”. This can be handled using SQL LIKE clause along with WHERE clause.

Table Of Contents

If LIKE clause is used along with % characters then sign can be used to define wildcards (missing letters in the pattern) both before and after the pattern.

Without a % character LIKE clause works similar to equal sign along with WHERE clause.

Syntax:

  • LIKE clause can be used with WHERE clause.
  • LIKE clause can be used in place of equal sign.
  • When LIKE is used alongwith % sign then sign can be used to define wildcards (missing letters in the pattern) both before and after the pattern.
  • We can have more than one conditions with AND or OR operators
  • LIKE clause can be used along in DELETE or UPDATE query too.

LIKE Operator Example

The “emp_info” table:

empID empName
1 smita
2 sneha
3 jyoti
4 pooja

Now we want to select the employees whose name starts with character “s” from the table above then the query would be like below.

OUTPUT:

empID empName
1 smita
2 sneha

In this tutorial we have learn about the MySQL Like Clause and its application with practical example. I hope you will like this tutorial.