SQL 'LIKE' query using '%' where the search criteria contains '%'

Question

I have an SQL query as below.

Select * from table 
where name like \'%\' + search_criteria + \'%\' 

If search_criteria = \'abc\', it will r

Answer 1

You need to escape it: on many databases this is done by preceding it with backslash, \%.

So abc becomes abc\%.

Your programming language will have a database-specific function to do this for you. For example, PHP has mysql_escape_string() for the MySQL database.