The Caret (^) Wildcard Character

The caret is the negative wildcard character. Use it to find strings that do not match a particular pattern.

For example, “[^a-f]” finds strings that are not in the range a-f and “[^a2bR]” finds strings that are not “a,” “2,” “b,” or “R.”

To find names beginning with “M” where the second letter is not “c”:

select au_lname 
from authors 
where au_lname like "M[^c]%"

When ranges are used, all values in the sort order between (and including) rangespec1 and rangespec2 are returned. For example, “[0-z]” matches 0-9, A-Z , a-z, and several punctuation characters in 7-bit ASCII.