Escaping a question mark on the MySQL CLI

Question

How do you escape a question mark character in a string on the MySQL CLI?

There are many methods to avoid having to escape characters, but from an ease-of-use perspective I would quite like to do some SELECT statements containing LIKE queries, some of which contain question marks and the usual \? does not work.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 08 '10 at 14:31

0

LIKE doesn't use ?. LIKE uses % and _.

answered Dec 08 '10 at 14:31

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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Same question with a `WHERE =` then. – Metalshark Dec 08 '10 at 14:33
`=` doesn't use *any* wildcards. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Dec 08 '10 at 14:35
I am looking for the string `` in a CMS. Performing `SELECT uid FROM cms_table WHERE html LIKE '%/about%'` works, however `SELECT uid FROM cms_table WHERE html LIKE '%/about?%'` doesn't. I cannot seem to escape the question mark and make it part of the statement. The same thing happens when using a plain `WHERE =`. – Metalshark Dec 08 '10 at 14:39
Thank you! There is something weird going on with this database, I'll look at character encodings... – Metalshark Dec 08 '10 at 14:53

Escaping a question mark on the MySQL CLI

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