SQL-----Like

Like can be a useful operator when you want to compare similar values.

The movies table contains two films with similar titles, 'Se7en' and 'Seven'.

How could we select all movies that start with 'Se' and end with 'en' and have exactly one character in the middle?

SELECT *

FROM movies

WHERE name Like 'Se_en';

• LIKE is a special operator used with the WHERE clause to search for a specific pattern in a column.
• name LIKE 'Se_en' is a condition evaluating the name column for a specific pattern.
• Se_en represents a pattern with a wildcard character.
• The _ means you can substitute any individual character here without breaking the pattern. The names Seven and Se7en both match this pattern.

The percentage sigh % is another wildcard character that can be used with LIKE.

Filter the result set to only include movies with names that begin with the letter 'A':

SELECT *

FROM movies

WHERE name LIKE 'A%' ;

% is a wildcard character that matches zero or more missing letters in the pattern. For example:

• A% matches all movies with names that begin with letter ‘A’
• %a matches all movies that end with ‘a’

We can also use % both before and after a pattern:

SELECT *

FROM movies

WHERE name Like '%man%'

Here, any movie that contains the word ‘man’ in its name will be returned in the result.

LIKE is not case sensitive. ‘Batman’ and ‘Man of Steel’ will both appear in the result of the query above.

Edit the query so that it selects all the information about the movie titles that begin with the word ‘The’.

SELECT *

FROM movies

WHERE name Like 'The %';

There is also a space in between because we don't want words like 'There', 'They', etc.