Wildcards Clause In MySQL

In MySQL, wildcards are special characters used in conjunction with the LIKE operator in a WHERE clause to perform pattern matching in string comparisons.

The Wildcards clause searches for a single character or any sequence of characters from a specific column from the SQL Table.

Here are the commonly used wildcards:

Percent % Wildcard Clause In MySQL:

Represents zero or more characters.

Example:

SELECT *
FROM products
WHERE product_name LIKE 'Tab%';

The above query retrieves all columns from the `products` table where the `product_name` starts with the 'Tab' string.

Search Specific substring using % Wildcard:

Search substring from the sequence of string characters from a specific column in Table.

Example:

SELECT * 
FROM products 
WHERE product_name LIKE '%cloth%';

Using the above query we can retrieve products whose product_name includes 'cloth' anywhere in their product_name.

Underscore _ Wildcard In MySQL:

Represents a single character in the string.

Example:

SELECT *
FROM products
WHERE product_name LIKE 'BAL_';

The above query retrieves all columns from the products table where the product_name starts with 'BAL' followed by any single character.

Underscore _ Example In MySQL:

The below query will find all products whose category name contains 7 characters long and start with 'CLOTH' and end with 'NG'.

Example:

SELECT *
FROM products
WHERE category LIKE 'CLOTH_NG';

Square Bracket [] Wildcard and Character Set [^] Wildcard In MySQL:

[]: Represents any single character within the specified range.

[^]: Represents any single character not in the specified set.

Example:

SELECT *
FROM products
WHERE product_name LIKE 'Desk[1-3]%';

SELECT *
FROM products
WHERE product_name NOT LIKE '[AE]%';

[]: This query retrieves all columns from the "products" table where the "product_name" starts with 'Desk' followed by a digit between 1 and 3.

[^]: This query retrieves all columns from the "products" table where the "product_name" does not start with 'A' or 'E'.

Hyphen (-) In MySQL:

Hyphen symbol are used inside square brackets to specify a range of characters.

Example:

SELECT * 
FROM products
WHERE product_name LIKE '[a-z]%';

The above query finds all products whose `product_name` starts with any lowercase letter.

<-- Group By

Having -->