Built-in Functions → like
like() is a boolean function that returns true if a string pattern can be found in a given string.
The like() function evaluates field and searches for an instance of pattern. It returns true if it finds a pattern in the field and stops searching. If a pattern is not found in the field, like returns false.
Signature
like(string expr field, string pattern, [string esc])
- field :
stringexpression to search - pattern :
stringto search for (case-sensitive) - esc :
string
Returns
boolean
Example
Find the number of times the country name contained in U shows up in a given table.
count(like(Sales_Acme.Countries.COUNTRY_NAME, 'U%'))
Before 2024.1.0, the like() function did not handle trailing patterns properly as it returned true when the field contained the pattern regardless of the place of the matching characters.
For example, this formula like(Sales_Acme.Countries.COUNTRY_NAME, '%U') would return true for the following country names: UNITED STATES, TURKEY, and PERU while it should return true only for PERU.
After upgrading to 2024.1.0 or later releases, you must load all tables that use this function from staging.