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Data & Analytics · Foundational

LIKE Operator

A predicate that matches strings against a pattern using wildcards: % for any sequence and _ for a single character.

Definition

LIKE is case-sensitive or case-insensitive depending on collation and vendor; ILIKE gives case-insensitive matching in PostgreSQL and Snowflake. A pattern with a leading wildcard ('%abc') cannot use a standard B-tree index seek.

Example

WHERE Email LIKE '%@example.com'

Exam tip

In LIKE, % matches zero or more characters and _ exactly one; '%' is not the * of file globbing.

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