If either the percent (%) character or underscore ( _ ) character is to be interpreted literally within the

pattern-string

argument of a LIKE predicate, an escape character must precede the percent character or underscore character within the string constant.

In order to define an escape character, the ESCAPE keyword and its character argument must follow the

pattern-string

argument within the LIKE predicate. The character specified for the character argument must precede occurrences of the percent character or underscore character within the

pattern-string

argument. Consider the following example:

This LIKE predicate is satisfied by rows containing the string

40%

in the

desc

column.