How to escape a string for use with the LIKE operator in SQL Server?

Question

I am looking for something that works in SQL Server similar to the @ symbol in c# which causes a string to be taken as it\'s literal. Eg:

strin         


        

Answer 1

If you don't want to modify the incoming text, you can use the "LEFT" function to create your own "STARTSWITH":

SELECT [Name] 
  FROM [Test] 
 WHERE @searchText = LEFT( [Name], LEN( @searchText ) )

(Note that you probably need to do extra work to handle the case of NULLs or empty string.)

EDIT: Removed the incorrect statement about using "LIKE" to search for "%".