Skip to main content Skip to complementary content
  • New archived content: Talend MDM, Talend Data Catalog 8.0, and Talend 7.3 products reached their end of life in 2024. Their documentation was moved to the Talend Archive page and will no longer receive content updates.
Close announcements banner

The "like" operator

The like operator allows you to check if a value matches a pattern. It can be used with the operator not to check if a value does not match the pattern specified. The expression is structured as follows:
value like pattern
You can use the following wildcards in the pattern:
Symbol Description Example
% Matches zero or more characters. Pattern: "bl%"
  • Matches: "black", "blue"
  • Does not match: "able"
_ Matches a single character. Pattern: "h_t"
  • Matches: "hit", "hat"
  • Does not match: "heat"
[] Matches any single character within the brackets. Pattern: "b[ae]t"
  • Matches: "bat", "bet"
  • Does not match: "beat"
[start-end] Matches any single character within the specified range. Pattern: "[b-d]at"
  • Matches: "bat", "cat", "dat"
  • Does not match: "data"
[^characters] Matches any character not in the brackets. Pattern: "h[^oa]t"
  • Matches: "hit", "hut"
  • Does not match: "hot", "hat"

Examples

Clause Result
WHERE name LIKE "a%"
Returns any element where the value of name starts with a.
WHERE name LIKE "%a"  
Returns any element where the value of name ends with a.
WHERE name LIKE "%bir%" 
Returns any element where the value of name contains bir.
WHERE name LIKE "_r%"
Returns any element where the second character of the value of nameis r.
WHERE name LIKE "a__%"
Returns any element where value of name starts with a, followed by at least two characters.
WHERE name LIKE "a%o"
Returns any element where value of name starts with a and ends with o.
WHERE name NOT LIKE "%[A-Z]"
Returns any element where value of name does not end with a capital letter.
WHERE name NOT LIKE "%[^0-9]%"
Returns any element where value of name only contains numbers.

Did this page help you?

If you find any issues with this page or its content – a typo, a missing step, or a technical error – please let us know!