LIKE pattern is usually case-sensitive

[fredowashere]

In AlaSQL the LIKE pattern is case-insensitive, but that's not true for most SQL implementations.
Why?

[fredowashere]

More than that other special chars don't work (?, _).

[mathiasrw]

Hi @fredowashere

In AlaSQL the LIKE pattern is case-insensitive, but that's not true for most SQL implementations.

For LIKE we are aligning with MySQL, MSSQL and SQLite.

Database	LIKE Default	ILIKE Support	Notes
PostgreSQL	Case-SENSITIVE	✅ Case-insensitive	ILIKE is PostgreSQL extension
Oracle	Case-SENSITIVE	❌	Use UPPER()/LOWER() instead
MySQL/MariaDB	Case-INSENSITIVE*	❌	*Depends on collation (default: ci)
MSSQL	Case-INSENSITIVE*	❌	*Depends on collation (default: ci)
SQLite	Case-INSENSITIVE**	❌	**ASCII only; case-sensitive for non-ASCII
AlaSQL	Case-INSENSITIVE	⚠️ Same as LIKE	All variants are case-insensitive

---

More than that other special chars don't work (?, _).

SQL uses _ (underscore), not ? (question mark) for single-character matching.

Both wildcards seems to be correctly implemented in src/15utility.js:

// Line 1222-1223: % wildcard
else if (currentChar === '%') {
    regexStr += '[\\s\\S]*';  // Matches any sequence of characters
}

// Line 1226-1227: _ wildcard  
else if (currentChar === '_') {
    regexStr += '.';  // Matches exactly one character
}

If you have any code examples that seems to not work, please share them so we can improve AlaSQL together.

[mathiasrw]

I have updated https://github.com/AlaSQL/alasql/wiki/LIKE with more details so it is more clear for future references.

[fredowashere]

Ok Mathia, thanks for the clarification!