Is the LIKE operator case-sensitive with MSSQL Server?

Question

In the documentation about the LIKE operator, nothing is told about the case-sensitivity of it. Is it? How to enable/disable it?

I am querying varchar(n)

Answer 1

If you want to achieve a case sensitive search without changing the collation of the column / database / server, you can always use the COLLATE clause, e.g.

USE tempdb;
GO
CREATE TABLE dbo.foo(bar VARCHAR(32) COLLATE Latin1_General_CS_AS);
GO
INSERT dbo.foo VALUES('John'),('john');
GO
SELECT bar FROM dbo.foo 
  WHERE bar LIKE 'j%';
-- 1 row

SELECT bar FROM dbo.foo 
  WHERE bar COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS LIKE 'j%';
-- 2 rows

GO    
DROP TABLE dbo.foo;

Works the other way, too, if your column / database / server is case sensitive and you don't want a case sensitive search, e.g.

USE tempdb;
GO
CREATE TABLE dbo.foo(bar VARCHAR(32) COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS);
GO
INSERT dbo.foo VALUES('John'),('john');
GO
SELECT bar FROM dbo.foo 
  WHERE bar LIKE 'j%';
-- 2 rows

SELECT bar FROM dbo.foo 
  WHERE bar COLLATE Latin1_General_CS_AS LIKE 'j%';
-- 1 row

GO
DROP TABLE dbo.foo;