T-SQL Escape Select .... special characters in like (percent semicolon)

It is well known that the LIKE operator in T-SQL uses a% symbol to denote wildcards. Most of the time, you may need to query for data that contains a percentage, such as Querying the field coupon contains 5% of the data. So how do you use a like search string that already has a percent sign (%) symbol?

As you can find from MSDN, the wildcard characters in like include:

Wildcard characters	Description	Example
%	An arbitrary string containing 0 or more characters.	The where title like '%computer% ' will find all titles that contain the word "computer" anywhere in the title.
_ (Underline)	Any single character.	WHERE au_fname like ' _ean ' will look for all 4-letter names (Dean, Sean, etc.) ending in EAN.
[ ]	Any single character in the specified range ([a-f]) or collection ([abcdef]).	WHERE au_lname like ' [C-p]arsen ' will find the last name of the author that ends with Arsen and starts with any single character between C and P, such as Carsen, Larsen, Karsen, and so on. In a range search, the range contains characters that may vary depending on the collation of the collation.
[^]	Any single character that does not belong to the specified range ([a-f]) or collection ([abcdef]).	WHERE au_lname like ' de[^l]% ' will look for the last names of all authors that begin with de and whose letters are not followed by L.

What about using wildcards as text?

1. Method 1 uses parentheses, such as 75%

WHERE mycol like '%75[%]% '

The following table shows several examples of using the LIKE keyword and [] wildcard characters.

Symbol	Meaning
Like ' 5[%] '	5%
Like ' [_]n '	_n
Like ' [A-CDF] '	A, B, C, D or F
Like ' [-ACDF] '	-, A, C, D or F
Like ' [[] '	[
Like '] '	]
Like ' abc[_]d% '	Abc_d and Abc_de
Like ' abc[def] '	ABCD, ABCE and ABCF

Method 2 using the ESCAPE clause

SELECT *

From table

WHERE mycol like '%75!%% '

ESCAPE '! '

T-SQL Escape Select .... special characters in like (percent semicolon)