SQL Between clause with strings columns

Question

I want to make a search using \"between\" clause over a string column. Doing some test I got this:

Let\'s assume that there is a country table with a \"name\" column

Answer 1

The expression

name between 'A' and 'B'

is equivalent to

name>='A' and name<='B'

So 'Argentina' is >='A' and <='B' and it satisfies the condition. But 'Bolivia' is NOT <='B'. 'Bolivia'>'B'. It doesn't just look at the first letter: it looks at the whole string. Which is surely the way it ought to be: if it didn't do this, there'd be no way to say that you wanted a range that included 'Smith' but not 'Smithers'.

To accomplish what you want, you could say:

substr(name,1,1) between 'A' and 'B'

or:

name like 'A%' or name like 'B%'

or:

name>='A' and name<'C'