expr LIKE pat [ESCAPE 'escape_char']

Pattern matching using an SQL pattern. Returns 1 (TRUE) or 0 (FALSE). If either expr or pat is NULL, the result is NULL.

The pattern need not be a literal string. For example, it can be specified as a string expression or table column. In the latter case, the column must be defined as one of the MySQL string types (see Section 13.3, “String Data Types”).

Per the SQL standard, LIKE performs matching on a per-character basis, thus it can produce results different from the = comparison operator:

mysql> SELECT 'ä' LIKE 'ae' COLLATE latin1_german2_ci;
+-----------------------------------------+
| 'ä' LIKE 'ae' COLLATE latin1_german2_ci |
+-----------------------------------------+
|                                       0 |
+-----------------------------------------+
mysql> SELECT 'ä' = 'ae' COLLATE latin1_german2_ci;
+--------------------------------------+
| 'ä' = 'ae' COLLATE latin1_german2_ci |
+--------------------------------------+
|                                    1 |
+--------------------------------------+

In particular, trailing spaces are always significant. This differs from comparisons performed with the = operator, for which the significance of trailing spaces in nonbinary strings (CHAR, VARCHAR, and TEXT values) depends on the pad attribute of the collation used for the comparison. For more information, see Trailing Space Handling in Comparisons.

With LIKE you can use the following two wildcard characters in the pattern:

mysql> SELECT 'David!' LIKE 'David_';
        -> 1
mysql> SELECT 'David!' LIKE '%D%v%';
        -> 1

To test for literal instances of a wildcard character, precede it by the escape character. If you do not specify the ESCAPE character, \ is assumed, unless the NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES SQL mode is enabled. In that case, no escape character is used.

mysql> SELECT 'David!' LIKE 'David\_';
        -> 0
mysql> SELECT 'David_' LIKE 'David\_';
        -> 1

To specify a different escape character, use the ESCAPE clause:

mysql> SELECT 'David_' LIKE 'David|_' ESCAPE '|';
        -> 1

The escape sequence should be one character long to specify the escape character, or empty to specify that no escape character is used. The expression must evaluate as a constant at execution time. If the NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES SQL mode is enabled, the sequence cannot be empty.

The following statements illustrate that string comparisons are not case-sensitive unless one of the operands is case-sensitive (uses a case-sensitive collation or is a binary string):

mysql> SELECT 'abc' LIKE 'ABC';
        -> 1
mysql> SELECT 'abc' LIKE _utf8mb4 'ABC' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_as_cs;
        -> 0
mysql> SELECT 'abc' LIKE _utf8mb4 'ABC' COLLATE utf8mb4_bin;
        -> 0
mysql> SELECT 'abc' LIKE BINARY 'ABC';
        -> 0

As an extension to standard SQL, MySQL permits LIKE on numeric expressions.

mysql> SELECT 10 LIKE '1%';
        -> 1

MySQL attempts in such cases to perform implicit conversion of the expression to a string. See Section 14.3, “Type Conversion in Expression Evaluation”.

mysql> SELECT filename FROM t1;
+--------------+
| filename     |
+--------------+
| C:           |
| C:\          |
| C:\Programs  |
| C:\Programs\ |
+--------------+

mysql> SELECT filename, filename LIKE '%\\' FROM t1;
+--------------+---------------------+
| filename     | filename LIKE '%\\' |
+--------------+---------------------+
| C:           |                   0 |
| C:\          |                   1 |
| C:\Programs  |                   0 |
| C:\Programs\ |                   1 |
+--------------+---------------------+

mysql> SELECT filename, filename LIKE '%\\\\' FROM t1;
+--------------+-----------------------+
| filename     | filename LIKE '%\\\\' |
+--------------+-----------------------+
| C:           |                     0 |
| C:\          |                     1 |
| C:\Programs  |                     0 |
| C:\Programs\ |                     1 |
+--------------+-----------------------+

expr NOT LIKE pat [ESCAPE 'escape_char']

This is the same as NOT (expr LIKE pat [ESCAPE 'escape_char']).

CREATE TABLE foo (bar VARCHAR(10));

INSERT INTO foo VALUES (NULL), (NULL);

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM foo WHERE bar NOT LIKE '%baz%' OR bar IS NULL;

STRCMP(expr1,expr2)

STRCMP() returns 0 if the strings are the same, -1 if the first argument is smaller than the second according to the current sort order, and NULL if either argument is NULL. It returns 1 otherwise.

mysql> SELECT STRCMP('text', 'text2');
        -> -1
mysql> SELECT STRCMP('text2', 'text');
        -> 1
mysql> SELECT STRCMP('text', 'text');
        -> 0

STRCMP() performs the comparison using the collation of the arguments.

mysql> SET @s1 = _utf8mb4 'x' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci;
mysql> SET @s2 = _utf8mb4 'X' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci;
mysql> SET @s3 = _utf8mb4 'x' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_as_cs;
mysql> SET @s4 = _utf8mb4 'X' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_as_cs;
mysql> SELECT STRCMP(@s1, @s2), STRCMP(@s3, @s4);
+------------------+------------------+
| STRCMP(@s1, @s2) | STRCMP(@s3, @s4) |
+------------------+------------------+
|                0 |               -1 |
+------------------+------------------+

If the collations are incompatible, one of the arguments must be converted to be compatible with the other. See Section 12.8.4, “Collation Coercibility in Expressions”.

mysql> SET @s1 = _utf8mb4 'x' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci;
mysql> SET @s2 = _utf8mb4 'X' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci;
mysql> SET @s3 = _utf8mb4 'x' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_as_cs;
mysql> SET @s4 = _utf8mb4 'X' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_as_cs;
-->
mysql> SELECT STRCMP(@s1, @s3);
ERROR 1267 (HY000): Illegal mix of collations (utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci,IMPLICIT)
and (utf8mb4_0900_as_cs,IMPLICIT) for operation 'strcmp'
mysql> SELECT STRCMP(@s1, @s3 COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci);
+---------------------------------------------+
| STRCMP(@s1, @s3 COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci) |
+---------------------------------------------+
|                                           0 |
+---------------------------------------------+