I'm trying to use T-SQL LIKE against multiple values. After my research, the easiest way seems to be something similar to:
SELECT Column1
FROM Table_1
WHERE Column1 LIKE '[A,B,C]%'
So that I can expect the output looks like A1,B2,C3...
My problem is that the elements(A,B,C) for my scenario are in the format of "X/Y/Z" -- yes, contains slash! And slash will be treated as a delimiter -- the same as comma. For instance, I want to select any places in New York, Tokyo and London, so i wrote:
WHERE Location LIKE '[US/New York, Japan/Tokyo, UK/London]%'
But it does the same as
WHERE Location LIKE '[US,New York, Japan, Tokyo, UK, London]%'
And it will return US/LA/CBD or Tokyo/Tower...
Can anybody light my way how to escape slash within the square brackets for LIKE clause here? Many thanks in advance.
Here is the sample table:
DECLARE @temp TABLE (Location NVARCHAR(50))
INSERT INTO @temp (Location ) VALUES ('US/New York/A')
INSERT INTO @temp (Location ) VALUES('New York/B')
INSERT INTO @temp (Location ) VALUES ('Japan/Tokyo/C')
INSERT INTO @temp (Location ) VALUES ('Tokyo/D')
INSERT INTO @temp (Location ) VALUES ('UK/London/E')
INSERT INTO @temp (Location ) VALUES('London/F')
And below is my draft script:
SELECT *
FROM @temp
WHERE Location LIKE '[US/New York, Japan/Tokyo, UK/London]%'
I was expecting the output is: US/New York/A Japan/Tokyo/C UK/London/E but actually all of them will be pulled out.
DECLARE @temp TABLE ( Location NVARCHAR(50) )
INSERT @temp (Location )
VALUES ('US/New York/A')
, ('New York/B')
, ('Japan/Tokyo/A')
, ('Tokyo/B')
, ('UK/London/A')
, ('London/B')
Select *
From @temp
Where Location Like '%/A'
There is no need to escape the /
in this case. You can simply use an expression with a trailing wildcard.
It appears you may have a misconception about how the []
pattern is interpreted in the LIKE function. When you have a pattern like '[US/New York]%'
, it is saying "Find values that start with any of the following characters U
,S
,/
,N
,e
,w
, (space), Y
, o
,r
, or k
. Thus, such a pattern would find a value South Africa
or Outer Mongolia
. It isn't looking for rows where the entire value is equal to US/New York
.
One way to achieve what you seek is it to use multiple Or
statements:
Select *
From @temp
Where Location Like 'US/New York%'
Or Location Like 'Japan/Tokyo%'
Or Location Like 'UK/London%'