Simple pattern matching

You can use the LIKE operator. Use underscore (_) for matching exactly one character. Use % for matching any number of characters.

• Find the count of all employees whose first name starts with Christ:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM employees WHERE first_name LIKE 'christ%';
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|     1157 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.06 sec)

• Find the count of all employees whose first name starts with Christ and ends with ed:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM employees WHERE first_name LIKE 'christ%ed';
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|      228 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.06 sec)

• Find the count of all employees whose first name contains sri:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM employees WHERE first_name LIKE '%sri%';
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|      253 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.08 sec)

• Find the count of all employees whose first name ends with er:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM employees WHERE first_name LIKE '%er';
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|     5388 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.08 sec)

• Find the count of all employees whose first name starts with any two characters followed by ka and then followed by any number of characters:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM employees WHERE first_name LIKE '__ka%';
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|     1918 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.06 sec)