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When would _ Wildcard actually be useful?

I am doing some tutorials and have just learnt about the _ wildcard so for example if in my table i had the first name Dario and wanted to find a name that started with any character followed by 'ario' i would use

SELECT * FROM Person WHERE FirstName LIKE '_ario'

But when would this actually be useful i am struggling to find a reason why you would want to query your database to find something that i suppose logic would help you figure out anyway?

Apologies if in the SQL world this is a stupid question still fairly new to this all!

Thanks, SuperJinx

MimicTech

It is just a wildcard charecter that resembles a single char. I have only used it a few times, but it is nice to have.

Let's say you are storing MAC addresses in a table (ie. AA:BB:CC:11:22:33) and you want to pull all of the MAC address that have an OUI (the first 3 octets) ending in CC. For this you would have to select where MAC_ADDR like '__:__:CC:%' .

Geeky example, but you can see where combining the wildcards can give you a bit more flexability.

SuperJinx

ASKER

Thanks for your answer although I have to say the example is a bit too complicated for me at the moment i can't really relate to it although i've read it 5-6 times.

None the less thank you for your answer Mimic.

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MimicTech

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