MySQL Wildcards

MySQL Wildcards are used with the LIKE and the NOT LIKE clauses.

MySQL Wildcards syntax

The Basic syntax of using a wildcard is:

expression LIKE pattern [ESCAPE <escape_character>]

There are two wildcards used in MySQL

• The % wildcard
• The _ wildcard

MySQL % wildcard

We use the % operator to match zero or more characters in a string.

Example1:  % followed by a pattern

The example will check if any strings are ending with 'ien'

select * from employees
where last_name like '%ien';

Example 2: %<pattern>%

This example searches for the pattern in between any number of characters.

select * from employees
 where email like '%sm%';

MySQL _ wildcard

We can check for exactly one character with the underscore( _ ) wildcard.

Example:

If we want to check if there are any employees with employee id in the 30s =, we can do

select * from employee_Dept where emp_id like '3_' ;

MySQL ESCAPE character

IF we have a pattern containing one of the wildcards, we can introduce a new character and escape it.

select * from employees where first_name like 'Gil#%%' ESCAPE '#';

Here the '#%%' with the Escape character will search for a % in the string.