Pattern Matching with Wildcard Characters

Wildcard characters represent one or more characters, or a range of characters, in a match_string.

A match_string is a character string containing the pattern to find in the expression. It can be any combination of constants, variables, and column names or a concatenated expression, such as:
like @variable + "%".

If the match string is a constant, it must always be enclosed in single or double quotes.

Use wildcard characters with the keyword like to find character and date strings that match a particular pattern. You cannot use like to search for seconds or milliseconds.

Use wildcard characters in where and having clauses to find character or date/time information that is like—or not like—the match string:

{where | having} [not]
	expression [not] like match_string
		[escape "escape_character "]

expression can be any combination of column names, constants, or functions with a character value.

Wildcard characters used without like have no special meaning. For example, this query finds any phone numbers that start with the four characters “415%”:
select phone 
from authors 
where phone = "415%"
Related concepts
Using Wildcard Characters With datetime Data