| SQL adaptation guide For Oracle MySQL 5.x / Data manipulation | |
Informix® supports MATCHES and LIKE in SQL statements. MySQL supports the LIKE statement as in Informix, plus the ~ operators that are similar but different from the Informix MATCHES operator.
MATCHES requires * and ? wildcard characters, and LIKE uses the % and _ wildcards was equivalents.
( col MATCHES 'Smi*' AND col NOT MATCHES 'R?x' ) ( col LIKE 'Smi%' AND col NOT LIKE 'R_x' )
MATCHES allows brackets to specify a set of matching characters at a given position:
( col MATCHES '[Pp]aris' ) ( col MATCHES '[0-9][a-z]*' )
The MySQL LIKE operator has no operator for [ ] brackets character ranges.
The database driver is able to translate Informix MATCHES expressions to LIKE expressions, when no [ ] bracket character ranges are used in the MATCHES operand.
However, for maximum portability, consider replacing the MATCHES expressions to LIKE expressions in all SQL statements of your programs.
Avoid using CHAR(N) types for variable length character data (such as name, address).
See also: MATCHES and LIKE operators.