Question

I am using SQL Server 2008. I have a table with the following column:

sampleData (nvarchar(max))

The value for this column in some of these rows are lists formatted as follows:

["value1","value2","value3"]

I’m trying to write a simple query that will return all rows with lists formatted like this, by just detecting the opening bracket.

SELECT * from sampleTable where sampleData like '[%'

The above query doesn’t work, because ‘[‘ is a special character. How can I escape the bracket so my query does what I want?

Answer 1

 ... like '[[]%'

You use [ ] to surround a special character (or range).

See the section "Using Wildcard Characters As Literals" in SQL Server LIKE

Note: You don’t need to escape the closing bracket…