Question

I have a masked textbox in c# winform.

The masking would be like

 - (two numbers on the front and 4 number on the right after the dash).

for ex: 12-3456

There are more permutations like

   - (3 spaces on the front and 5 on the right)

for ex: 123-34567

When a user types 123-34567, the select sql query should return only

123-34567

When a user types 12-3456, the select sql query should return only

12-3456

When a user types   -, the select sql query should return
only

12-3456 (ie. two spaces typed)

When a user types    -, the select sql query should
return only

123-34567 (ie. three spaces typed)

In other words, a user can search without entering anything and have
only mask enabled text box and
search(empty – empty) – only dash mask , type number(s) on the
mask and search (for ex: 12- ).

The query am using is

select column1,column2 from table1 where column2 like '%__-%';

(the underscores are dymanically calculated) and how do i get this in any other optimum approach (say like in a single query) ?

Consider this table1 and having a column “MaskedInfo” in the database.

Table1:

MaskedInfo  

1234567
12-34567
123-4567
123-45678

User can type anything to search like 12-34567 or 123-4567 or simply
1234567 and if the text box is empy load everything in the result.

Answer 1

The problem seems to be the first %, you’re changing the spaces int he user input for underscores, there you’re right but the first % will get you results with something before the underscores,
so

like '%__-%'  //(two underscores) 

will get anything that has two or more digits before the -,

like '%___-%'  //(three underscores) 

will get anything that has three or more digits before the –

removing the first % will get the result that have exactly as many digits as underscores