Question

I have the following value in my table:

When I Don\’t Know What To Do

Notice the apostrophe is already escaped. Now I want to select this value from this table using the following SQL string:

SELECT * FROM wp_wpsc_productmeta WHERE meta_value = ‘When I Don\’t Know What To Do’

I am getting 0 rows returned. When I change the SQL string to this:

SELECT * FROM wp_wpsc_productmeta WHERE meta_value LIKE ‘When I Don%’

I get my result set correctly. So, my question is, how do I write the SQL string so that I can select a value from a table when that value has an already-escaped apostrophe in it?

Please do not answer that I should use parameters. I’d very much like to figure out the answer using the method that I’m trying. Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

What language are you using? I think the language is probably interpreting the escape backslash as an escape for its benefit, so you may need to do it twice to ensure the database sees it too:

'I don\\\'t know';