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Query 1:

"SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE name LIKE '%e%'";

This query will look for all names that contain the letter ‘e’.

Query 2:

"SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE name LIKE '%s'" % search_name;

This query will look for all names that contain match search_name exactly.

What I want to know is if there is a way to query for a partial match like in query 1 while using the placeholder in query 2?

I have tried something like:

"SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE name LIKE %'%s'%" % search_name; <- didn’t work; "SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE name LIKE '%%s%'" % search_name; <- also didn’t work;

Shadow
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Evan
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    I don't think this has got anything to do with MySQL or sql. You must be using some kind of a programming language that can expand the `%s` placeholder. This is a question for that programming language, not for any of the tags you used for this question. The tags added by Vadim are completely irrelevant as well. – Shadow Jun 26 '18 at 10:45
  • Your right sorry, I am running the sql queries in python, which is where the placeholder comes from. – Evan Jun 26 '18 at 10:51

1 Answers1

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Either use a different way of formatting the string inside your query string like 

SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE name LIKE '%" + search_name + "%'"

or f-Strings.

Or you could add more % and escape it with a slash so it gets put into the string normally. 

\%%s\%
Bernhard
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