Which is faster — INSTR or LIKE?

Question

If your goal is to test if a string exists in a MySQL column (of type \'varchar\', \'text\', \'blob\', etc) which of the following is faster / more efficient / better to use

Answer 1

MySQL - INSTR vs LOCATE vs LIKE vs REGEXP

For me the INSTR and LOCATE performed the fastest:

# 5.074 sec
SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000,INSTR('foobar','foo'));

# 5.086 sec
SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000,LOCATE('foo','foobar')); 

# 8.990 sec
SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000,'foobar' LIKE '%foo%');

# 14.433 sec
SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000,'foobar' REGEXP 'foo'); 

# 5.5.35-0ubuntu0.12.10.2 
SELECT @@version;