Match '%' sign when searching in MySQL database

Question

I would like to match this \'wildcard %\' in MySQL.
I tried using escape \\% and it is not working.

Answer 1

You need to escape the \ in PHP string as well, otherwise PHP would think that you are actually escaping the %, thus sending literal % to the sql query, so I think this should work:

mysql_query("select * from bla where bli like '\\%somewords\\%'");