How to escape literal percent sign when NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES option is enabled?

Question

My company runs MySQL in NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES mode. How can I escape a literal % or _ in a LIKE query in this mode? The standard way is \%, but that doesn't work in this mode.

Example: a column has the following values: 5% off, 50% off. The following query works in standard mode but not in NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES mode:

SELECT * FROM mytable
WHERE mycol LIKE '5\% off'

Answer 1

you need escape

select * from mytable
where mycol like '5\% off' escape '\';

For a version that works regardless of NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES mode, you can use a different character, like pipe:

select * from mytable
where mycol like '5|% off' escape '|';