Is there a combination of “LIKE” and “IN” in SQL?

Question

In SQL I (sadly) often have to use \"LIKE\" conditions due to databases that violate nearly every rule of normalization. I can\'t change that right now. But tha

Answer 1

If you want to make your statement easily readable, then you can use REGEXP_LIKE (available from Oracle version 10 onwards).

An example table:

SQL> create table mytable (something)
  2  as
  3  select 'blabla' from dual union all
  4  select 'notbla' from dual union all
  5  select 'ofooof' from dual union all
  6  select 'ofofof' from dual union all
  7  select 'batzzz' from dual
  8  /

Table created.

The original syntax:

SQL> select something
  2    from mytable
  3   where something like 'bla%'
  4      or something like '%foo%'
  5      or something like 'batz%'
  6  /

SOMETH
------
blabla
ofooof
batzzz

3 rows selected.

And a simple looking query with REGEXP_LIKE

SQL> select something
  2    from mytable
  3   where regexp_like (something,'^bla|foo|^batz')
  4  /

SOMETH
------
blabla
ofooof
batzzz

3 rows selected.

BUT ...

I would not recommend it myself due to the not-so-good performance. I'd stick with the several LIKE predicates. So the examples were just for fun.