MySQL Wildcards: Using LIKE with % and _

In MySQL, wildcards are used to match strings in a fuzzy manner. There are two commonly used wildcards.

1. Percent sign (%): Represents zero or more arbitrary characters.
2. Underscore (_): represents a single arbitrary character

Wildcards are usually used together with the LIKE operator for conducting fuzzy searches in the WHERE clause, with the following syntax:

SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
WHERE column_name LIKE pattern;

Here, column_name is the name of the column to be queried, table_name is the name of the table to be queried, and pattern is the pattern to be matched. Below are some examples using wildcards:

1. Search for all names that start with the letter “J”.

SELECT * FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE 'J%';

1. Find all records that contain “an” in their names.

SELECT * FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE '%an%';

1. Find all records where the third character in the name is “o”.

SELECT * FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE '__o%';

Be cautious of using wildcard characters for performance reasons, as they may slow down queries when used in large tables.