SQL LIKE operator

The SQL LIKE operator gives you the ability to search through a database using wildcards. The syntax is:

SELECT column_name1 FROM table_name WHERE column_name1 LIKE pattern;

We will use the Employees table to demonstrate how to fetch specific data with the SQL LIKE operator:

+----------------+-----------+-----------+
| employeeNumber | lastName  | firstName |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+
|           1002 | Murphy    | Diane     |
|           1056 | Patterson | Mary      |
|           1076 | Firrelli  | Jeff      |
|           1088 | Patterson | William   |
|           1102 | Bondur    | Gerard    |
|           1143 | Bow       | Anthony   |
|           1165 | Jennings  | Leslie    |
|           1166 | Thompson  | Leslie    |
|           1188 | Firrelli  | Julie     |
|           1216 | Patterson | Steve     |
|           1286 | Tseng     | Foon Yue  |
|           1323 | Vanauf    | George    |
|           1337 | Bondur    | Loui      |
|           1370 | Hernandez | Gerard    |
|           1401 | Castillo  | Pamela    |
|           1501 | Bott      | Larry     |
|           1504 | Jones     | Barry     |
|           1611 | Fixter    | Andy      |
|           1612 | Marsh     | Peter     |
|           1619 | King      | Tom       |
|           1621 | Nishi     | Mami      |
|           1625 | Kato      | Yoshimi   |
|           1702 | Gerard    | Martin    |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+

To fetch records whose firstName parameter begins with M, we can use the following command:

SELECT * FROM employees WHERE firstName LIKE ‘M%’;

This would produce the following result:

+----------------+-----------+-----------+
| employeeNumber | lastName  | firstName |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+
|           1056 | Patterson | Mary      |
|           1621 | Nishi     | Mami      |
|           1702 | Gerard    | Martin    |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+

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