sql - Why does using an Underscore character in a LIKE filter give me all the results?

Question

I wrote the below SQL query with a LIKE condition:

SELECT * FROM Manager
WHERE managerid LIKE '_%'
AND managername LIKE '%_%'

In the LIKE I want to search for any underscores %_%, but I know that my columns' data has no underscore characters.

• Why does the query give me all the records from the table?

Sample data:

create table Manager(
    id int
    ,managerid varchar(3)
    ,managername varchar(50)
    );

insert into Manager(id,managerid,managername)values(1,'A1','Mangesh');
insert into Manager(id,managerid,managername)values(2,'A2','Sagar');
insert into Manager(id,managerid,managername)values(3,'C3','Ahmad');
insert into Manager(id,managerid,managername)values(4,'A4','Mango');
insert into Manager(id,managerid,managername)values(5,'B5','Sandesh');

Sql-Fiddle

Answer 1

Modify your WHERE condition like this:

WHERE mycolumn LIKE '%\_%' ESCAPE ''

This is one of the ways in which Oracle supports escape characters. Here you define the escape character with the escape keyword. For details see this link on Oracle Docs.

The '_' and '%' are wildcards in a LIKE operated statement in SQL.

The _ character looks for a presence of (any) one single character. If you search by columnName LIKE '_abc', it will give you result with rows having 'aabc', 'xabc', '1abc', '#abc' but NOT 'abc', 'abcc', 'xabcd' and so on.

The '%' character is used for matching 0 or more number of characters. That means, if you search by columnName LIKE '%abc', it will give you result with having 'abc', 'aabc', 'xyzabc' and so on, but no 'xyzabcd', 'xabcdd' and any other string that does not end with 'abc'.

In your case you have searched by '%_%'. This will give all the rows with that column having one or more characters, that means any characters, as its value. This is why you are getting all the rows even though there is no _ in your column values.