Escape Character – MS SQL
What is the escape character in SQL?
Assume you have to find the the names that contains single quote (‘), in this scenario single quote(‘) itself works as the escape character.
SELECT * FROM Person.Person WHERE LastName LIKE '%''%'
Consider the situation where you are tying to find records which contains [ or % itself, what are our options?
Okay, the ESCAPE keyword can be used to specify an escape character of our choice.
SELECT * FROM #temp WHERE Column1 LIKE '%\%' ESCAPE ('\')
In another case square brackets are also used in the pattern matching, So with out an escape character it will be tough to find [.
Its very simple query with a escape keyword
SELECT * FROM #temp WHERE Column1 LIKE '%^[%' ESCAPE ('^')
You can download the sample code used in the article here
References
LIKE (Transact-SQL)