TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 7/12/11 – Wildcards

This weeks tip:

I use wildcards and the “LIKE” operator in my TSQL all the time – a lot of the time to find table names, column names etc.

Select OBJECT_NAME (OBJECT_ID),
NAME
from sys.columns
where name like '%file%'

Ninety eight percent of the time, I use the %.  The other two percent, I need to look up the exact syntax.  Well, here’s a quick reference for you:

Sometimes an issue comes up where you need to search for the actual wildcard character, for more info on that, check out the section titled “Using Wildcard Characters As Literals” from the MSD article on LIKE.

Here are some related posts from the intraweb:

• A good article from devasp.net here: SQL Server 2005 and WildCards characters note – it’s 2005, but it still applies.
• A good few good examples from SQL Tutorial here: SQL Like

Previous Tips O’ the Week

• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 7/5/11 – Keyboard Shortcuts
• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 6/28/11 – SP_HELPTEXT
• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 6/21/11 – Copy a Table Structure
• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 6/14/11 – The Empty GUID
• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 6/6/11 – Declare and Assign Variables