## Searching for Character Strings: LIKE

To select specific rows, you can use the WHERE clause. If not all the characters in a column value are known, you can also specify incomplete search values. The LIKE predicate is provided for this purpose.

### Prerequisites

You require the demo data for the SQL Tutorial.

Start the query tool SQL Studio as database administrator MONA with password RED and log on to the demo database instance DEMODB.

### Examples

SELECT firstname, name
FROM hotel.customer
WHERE name LIKE 'P%'

Selecting the customers whose last names begin with P

Result

FIRSTNAME | NAME
Jenny | Porter
Joseph | Peters

SELECT firstname, name
FROM hotel.customer
WHERE name LIKE '%er'

Selecting the customers whose last names end in er

Result

FIRSTNAME | NAME
Jenny | Porter
Frank | Miller
Susan | Baker

SELECT firstname, name
FROM hotel.customer
WHERE firstname LIKE '_i__'

Selecting the customers whose first names are four characters long and that contain i as the second letter

Result

FIRSTNAME | NAME
Mike | Jackson
Rita | Doe

SELECT firstname, name
FROM hotel.customer
WHERE name LIKE '_%an%'

Selecting the customers whose last names contain an after the first position

Result

FIRSTNAME | NAME
Rose | Brian
Martin | Randolph

See also:

SQL Reference Manual, LIKE Predicate (like_predicate)

More examples for Data Query