Wildcard characters

wildcard characters are used with the SQL LIKE operator. SQL wildcards are used to search for data within a table.

Wildcards in SQL are:%, _, [charlist], [^charlist]

% - A substitute for zero or more characters

Eg:  //selects all customers with a City starting with "Lo"
     SELECT * FROM Customers
     WHERE City LIKE 'Lo%';

    //selects all customers with a City containing the pattern "es"
   SELECT * FROM Customers
    WHERE City LIKE '%es%';

_ - A substitute for a single character

Eg://selects all customers with a City starting with any character, followed by "erlin"
SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE City LIKE '_erlin';

[charlist] - Sets and ranges of characters to match

Eg://selects all customers with a City starting with "a", "d", or "l"
SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE City LIKE '[adl]%';

//selects all customers with a City starting with "a", "d", or "l"
SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE City LIKE '[a-c]%';

[^charlist] - Matches only a character NOT specified within the brackets

Eg://selects all customers with a City starting with a character that is not "a", "p", or "l"
SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE City LIKE '[^apl]%';

or

SELECT * FROM Customers
WHERE City NOT LIKE '[apl]%' and city like '_%';

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