MySQL Wildcards

What Are Wildcards?

A wildcard is a special character that stands in for one or more unknown characters within a string. MySQL wildcards only work when paired with the LIKE (or NOT LIKE) operator — using them with a plain = comparison treats them as literal characters instead of pattern placeholders.

The Percent Sign (%)

The percent sign matches zero, one, or any number of characters. It is by far the most commonly used wildcard. Placing % at the end of a pattern searches for strings that start with a given prefix; placing it at the start searches for a suffix; placing it on both sides searches for a substring anywhere in the value.

The Underscore (_)

The underscore matches exactly one character, no more and no less. It is useful when you know the length of the pattern but not every character — for example, matching a four-character product code where only the first letter is known.

Character Lists

Standard SQL supports bracketed character lists like [a-f] in some dialects, but MySQL's LIKE does not support this syntax natively — brackets are treated as literal characters. To match a character range or set in MySQL, use REGEXP (or RLIKE) instead, which supports full regular expression patterns including [abc] and [a-z].

• % — matches any number of characters, including none
• _ — matches exactly one character
• REGEXP '[a-z]' — matches a character class (use this instead of bracket wildcards)
• ESCAPE 'char' — lets you search for a literal % or _ inside a value

SELECT customer_name
FROM customers
WHERE customer_name LIKE 'Jo%';

SELECT customer_name, email
FROM customers
WHERE email LIKE '%@gmail.%';

SELECT product_code, product_name
FROM products
WHERE product_code LIKE 'X___9';