Following up on what moritz said:

First (for mysql, at least) the way to include a literal "%" or literal "_" as part of the search condition in the "LIKE" value is to put a backslash in front of that character -- e.g.  % 1\_000\% % will match any string field value that contains a literal " 1_000% ", with anything (or nothing) before and after.

As a more general method for conjoining different "like" conditions (updated as per "###" comments): 

my @sources = ( 'artist 1', 'artist 2', 'whatever' );  ### we make an 
+array first...
my @values = map { s/([_%])/\\$1/g; "%$_%" } @sources;  ### ...to avoi
+d an error here
my $like_clause = join( " or ", map { "Songs.Artist LIKE ?" } @values;

my $sth = $dbh->prepare( "SELECT * FROM Songs where ($like_clause)" );
$sth->execute( @values );

[download]
(I like putting parens around a set of related "OR" conditions -- it's a handy safeguard in case I need to include some other condition using "AND".)

UPDATE: Sorry about having posted unusable code earlier -- I should have tested my initial version, to see that it produced the error mentioned in Mad_Mac's reply below. My code has been fixed now, as indicated in the comments above.

In reply to Re: SQL LIKE and Binding Variables by graff
in thread SQL LIKE and Binding Variables by Mad_Mac

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