SQL | LIKE

Sometimes we may require tuples from the database which match certain patterns. For example, we may wish to retrieve all columns where the tuples start with the letter ‘y’, or start with ‘b’ and end with ‘l’, or even more complicated and restrictive string patterns. This is where the LIKE Clause comes to rescue, often coupled with the WHERE Clause in SQL.

There are two kinds of wildcards used to filter out the results:

• % : Used to match zero or more characters. (Variable Length)
• _ : Used to match exactly one character. (Fixed Length)

The following are the rules for pattern matching with the LIKE Clause:

Pattern	Meaning
‘a%’	Match strings which start with ‘a’
‘%a’	Match strings with end with ‘a’
‘a%t’	Match strings which contain the start with ‘a’ and end with ‘t’.
‘%wow%’	Match strings which contain the substring ‘wow’ in them at any position.
‘_wow%’	Match strings which contain the substring ‘wow’ in them at the second position.
‘_a%’	Match strings which contain ‘a’ at the second position.
‘a_ _%’	Match strings which start with ‘a’ and contain at least 2 more characters.

Example:

Say we have a relation, Supplier. We want to test various patterns using the LIKE clause:

Supplier Table:

SupplierID	Name	Address
S1	Paragon Suppliers	21-3, Okhla, Delhi
S2	Mango Nation	21, Faridabad, Haryana
S3	Canadian Biz	6/7, Okhla Phase II, Delhi
S4	Caravan Traders	2-A, Pitampura, Delhi
S5	Harish and Sons	Gurgaon, NCR
S6	Om Suppliers	2/1, Faridabad, Haryana

Sample Queries and Outputs:

SELECT SupplierID, Name, Address
FROM Suppliers
WHERE Name LIKE 'Ca%';

Output:

S3	Canadian Biz	6/7, Okhla Phase II, Delhi
S4	Caravan Traders	2-A, Pitampura, Delhi

SELECT *
FROM Suppliers
WHERE Address LIKE '%Okhla%';

Output:

S1	Paragon Suppliers	21-3, Okhla, Delhi
S3	Canadian Biz	6/7, Okhla Phase II, Delhi

SELECT SupplierID, Name, Address
FROM Suppliers
WHERE Name LIKE '_ango%';

Output:

S2

Mango Nation

21, Faridabad, Haryana

Application: The LIKE operator is extremely resourceful in situations such as address filtering wherein we know only a segment or a portion of the entire address (such as locality or city) and would like to retrieve results based on that. The wildcards can be resourcefully exploited to yield even better and more filtered tuples based on the requirement.

This article is contributed by Anannya Uberoi. If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article using contribute.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to contribute@geeksforgeeks.org. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other Geeks.

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