What's the difference between “LIKE” and “=” in SQL?

Question

Is there any difference between:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE username=\"davyjones\"

and

SELECT * FROM users WHERE username LI         


        

Answer 1

LIKE allows wildcards like % (any number of characters here) and _ (one character here).

SELECT * FROM users WHERE username LIKE 'joe%'

Selects all usernames starting with joe.

Answer 2

LIKE searches for a pattern.

/* Returns all users whose username starts with "d" */
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username LIKE 'd%'

/* Returns all users whose username contains "dav" */
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username LIKE '%dav%'

Answer 3

That will give you the same result. However, LIKE allows wildcards, for example...

SELECT * FROM users WHERE username LIKE 'davy%'

The only syntax problem was double quotes instead of single quotes

Answer 4

create table A (id int,name varchar(30))

insert into A values(4,'subhash')

Use the trailing whitespace to search the name field:

select * from A where name='Subhash '
--Yields 1 row
select * from A where name like 'Subhash '
--Yields 0 row

Answer 5

Like is pattern matching operator and = is exact matching operator. i.e. where name like W% it means start with W and after that one or more characters and = i.e. where name ='James' this is exact matching

Answer 6

Equals '=' is just for equality. On the other hand, LIKE supports SQL wildcard matching.

So, with LIKE you can do name like '%jones' to get all the names ending in jones. With LIKE, the percent '%' character is anything, length zero or more, and the underscore character, '_', is any one character.