ITPEC FE Morning April 2021 Question 27

SQL LIKE Pattern Matching — select rows where a column starts with a specific character.

The task: find all students whose name starts with A.

LIKE wildcards:
- % — matches zero or more characters
- _ — matches exactly one character

Pattern analysis:
- 'A%' → starts with A, followed by anything → correct
- '%A' → ends with A
- '%A_' → has A as the second-to-last character
- 'A_' → starts with A + exactly one more character (2-char names only)

Why not others:
- (a) `'%A'` — matches names ending in A, not starting
- (b) `'%A_'` — matches names with A before the last character
- (c) `'A_'` — too restrictive, only 2-character names like "Al"

Key rule: % = any length, _ = exactly one character. To match "starts with X", use 'X%'.

AI-generated — may contain errors