SQL Wildcards

Wildcards are special characters used with LIKE to build flexible text search patterns.

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Wildcards are special characters used with the LIKE operator to match patterns in text data.

Percent Wildcard (%)

The percent sign (%) represents zero, one, or multiple characters.

SELECT name
FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE 'A%';

Matches names starting with A.

SELECT name
FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE '%son';

Matches names ending with "son".

The underscore (_) represents exactly one character.

SELECT name
FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE 'A___';

Matches names that start with A and contain exactly four characters.

You can combine % and _ to build complex patterns.

SELECT name
FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE 'A_%e';

If your pattern needs to include % or _ literally, you may need to use an ESCAPE character (database-specific).

SELECT name
FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE '100\%%' ESCAPE '\';

LIKE is simple and portable across database systems. Some systems also support REGEXP or similar operators for advanced pattern matching.

Case sensitivity depends on database collation settings. In many MySQL configurations, LIKE is case-insensitive by default.

Patterns starting with % (for example '%phone') usually cannot use indexes efficiently.
Patterns like 'phone%' can often use indexes.

Continue with SQL IN to learn how to match a column against multiple values more efficiently.

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