What does LIKE do, and what are % and _?

SQL SELECT, filtering and sorting · Freshers

Model answer

LIKE matches text patterns: % matches any number of characters, _ matches exactly one. name LIKE 'A%' finds names starting with A. A pattern with a leading % usually cannot use a normal index, so it can be slow on large tables.

Learn this topic

SELECT, FROM and WHERE: Your First Queries in the course SQL for Beginners: Learn Databases Step by Step.

Sign in to add your own answer.

More questions

• How do you select specific columns and filter rows?
• How do you combine conditions in WHERE?
• How do you sort and limit results?
• What does DISTINCT do?
• What is an alias?
• What is the difference between WHERE and HAVING?