Re: Using "LIKE"?

[Felix Geerinckx]

Bruce D wrote:

> I read somewhere that using "LIKE" in the select statement would cause the engine to NOT use the
> indexes.

It depends on your use of wildcards. In general:

col LIKE 'a%' -> index is used
col LIKE '%a%' -> index is not used

More characters before '%' -> better use of index.

Try it with EXPLAIN SELECT col FROM foo WHERE col LIKE ... on your table

and look at the rows column.

--
felix
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