The use of LIKE in a SQL query without one or more wildcards in the sought value is suspicious. A maintainer can suppose that either
= was meant instead, or that the wildcard was unintentionally omitted.
Note that in some cases using LIKE without a wildcard may return different results than the use of =. Thus, the use of
LIKE without a wildcard may be intentional. However, it is highly likely to confuse maintainers who either are unaware of this fact, or
don’t understand that such circumstances apply to the query in question.
Noncompliant code example
SELECT name
FROM product
WHERE name LIKE 'choc'
Compliant solution
SELECT name
FROM product
WHERE name LIKE 'choc%'
or
SELECT name
FROM product
WHERE name = 'choc'
