Question

I am trying to select data containing four percentage signs in a row. How can I escape the percentage signs so my LIKE condition works?

Thanks

Answer 1

Use @% with the escape character clause:

select * from tbl where fld like '%@%%' escape '@' 

This will search for all records that contain the '%' character in the fld column.

DB2/z has a slightly different format:

select * from tbl where fld like {escape '@'} '%@%%' 

Obviously, you’ll need to choose your escape character carefully so it won’t interfere with the rest of your string but this is relatively easy for static strings. Dynamically built strings will require dynamically built queries so that it doesn’t use a character from the string.