LIKE — SQL Technical Interview Questions & Answers

LIKE

LIKE

  • LIKE matches a pattern. % = any characters. _ = one character. WHERE name LIKE 'A%'; names starting with A. WHERE name LIKE '%sha'; ending with sha. WHERE name LIKE 'A_ha'; A + one char + ha.
  • LIKE is not regex. For regex use REGEXP. LIKE is case-insensitive for typical utf8mb4_ci collations — don’t fight it with LOWER() unless you must.
  • Leading % (LIKE '%sha') cannot use a normal B-tree index well. Search ‘starts with’ when you can: 'A%'.
  • Trap: LIKE 40 without quotes on a numeric thought. Trap: * as wildcard (that is not SQL).
  • On the example next to this theory: LIKE — wHERE combines predicates with AND/OR; LIKE does pattern match.

Technical Interview Tip: WHERE name LIKE 'A%'; — starts with A.

Code Examples for LIKE

LIKE — sample query

CREATE TABLE products (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, price REAL);
INSERT INTO products VALUES (1, 'Pen', 10), (2, 'Book', 200), (3, 'Bag', 50);
SELECT * FROM products
WHERE price BETWEEN 20 AND 150 AND name LIKE 'B%';

LIKE — wHERE combines predicates with AND/OR; LIKE does pattern match.

How to Explain LIKE to an Interviewer

Wildcard for any length?

% Example: LIKE '%sha'