How do I search for a specific letter in a table?

Question

Iám so new in this, and learning... I could use som help to a problem. I want to search in a table. I´m searching in for lastnames with the letter s in it. How do I do that? (Oracle SQL)
I wrote:

select fnamn,enamn  
from customers
where enamn LIKE 's%';

I have tried a sevral combinatins now...

Answer 1

0

You're close. To search for the letter 's' anywhere in the name, you need to add an additional wild card to your search like this: '%s%'. That will find it anywhere within the name. But, understand, that will also lead to a scan of the table and possibly slow performance.

answered Sep 24 '12 at 09:43 AM

Grant Fritchey ♦♦
62.1k ● 12 ● 19 ● 66

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Answer 2

0

Grant is right - it won't be performant, but it is the answer...

SELECT fnamn, enamn FROM Customers WHERE enamn LIKE '%s%'

As you can see, it's all but identical to the code you showed.

The % wildcard matches zero or more characters; there's also an _ wildcard that matches a single character.

You can also build up not-quite-regular-expressions:

SELECT enamn FROM Customers WHERE enamn LIKE '%[xyz]%'

This will show you all names where there's a letter from what I've heard described as "the arse end of the alphabet".

There are some other tricks to learn - see the documentation for LIKE for more ideas.

answered Sep 24 '12 at 10:10 AM

ThomasRushton ♦
29.2k ● 6 ● 9 ● 36

Excellent answer, but doesn't performant mean an actor in a play? Ha!

Sep 24 '12 at 10:17 AM Grant Fritchey ♦♦

I have no idea - I've spent too much time talking to pointy-haired bosses over the years, and it has warped my vocabulary...

Sep 24 '12 at 11:35 AM ThomasRushton ♦

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How do I search for a specific letter in a table?

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