why does this return ALL of my records?

[sneakyimp]

does the underscore character have some significant meaning in sql? why does this query return all my records (except that one of course)

SELECT c.id, c.name FROM company c WHERE (name LIKE '%_%') AND c.id != 27561

using mysql_real_escape_string on '_' doesn't alter it. what's the deal yo?

[cgraz]

The underscore matches any single character. For example,

WHERE fieldname LIKE '___'

would match all three-letter words as there are 3 underscores.

LIKE '%_%' matches everything in your database containing one character somewhere in the name field. This would match on every name field in your database that is not empty, except for id 27561.

[sneakyimp]

is there any way to escape that character then? it is possible that the name field might contain just an underscore character.

[cgraz]

You'd just escape it with a \

[sneakyimp]

THANKS! Any other chars I need to watch for besides _ and %?

[cgraz]

Just those two as far as I know.