Yes, LIKE can be used in a WHERE clause.

But the easiest way is to create a test table, add two or three rows to it and run a test with a query tool or the command line interface of your SQL database to see if the result is what you intended to do.

The LIKE doesn't seem to be working.

The first half of every table will be the same.
Example: man1-

The second half (after the dash) will always be different.

The LIKE only works if I use the exact model name for:

WHERE products_manu LIKE 'man1-' ORDER BY products_id asc limit 1

Is there possibly some different wordage I need to be using?

The reason your LIKE statement is not working is that it is meant to be used with wildcard characters. See:

[dev.mysql.com...]

The statement:

WHERE products_id LIKE 'man1-'

is logically equivalent to

WHERE products_id = 'man1-'

because there are no wildcards. If you want to reference all instances where products_id begins with 'man1-' and are followed by anything else then use:

WHERE products_id LIKE 'man1-%'

In the above LIKE clause, the '%' is a wildcard that can represent any character or set of trailing characters. The '_' character is a wildcard that can be used to represent a single character.

So I think you need:

UPDATE products
SET products_manu = 'Manufacturer1'
WHERE products_id LIKE 'Man1-%'

Hope that helps.

[edited by: ZydoSEO at 6:14 am (utc) on Jan. 5, 2008]

Thank you, that worked flawlessly!

I also tried updating a table with NULL as default in similar fashion, but it isn't saving.

Result:
Affected rows: 0 (Query took 0.0153 sec)

Code:

UPDATE products
SET products_manu = '21'
WHERE products_manu = '' ORDER BY products_id asc limit 1

Also tried:

UPDATE products
SET products_manu = '21'
WHERE products_manu = 'NULL' ORDER BY products_id asc limit 1

(and null without the quotes)

In SQL when you are referring to/testing for NULL values in a SELECT use IS NULL (you cannot check for NULL using '=').

Try

UPDATE products
SET products_manu = '21'
WHERE products_manu IS NULL

Also, with most DBs ORDER BY is not valid with UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE (only SELECT). But I'm not sure about MySQL (mainly Oracle/SQL*Server experience).

[edited by: ZydoSEO at 4:15 pm (utc) on Jan. 8, 2008]

Thank you ZydoSEO, I will bookmark this topic for future use.. but before I read your reply I noticed today, that the table was numerical, so I had to use ='0' in order to execute my query.

But I suppose it's safe to continue using NULL instead of default after reading your message, now I know how to update tables if I need to if they're varchar. :)

Varchar and numeric fields can have NULL values (unless the field is defined with a default value). I think of NULL as meaning it doesn't have a set value at the moment. So you can use IS NULL on both alpha (varchar/char) and numeric fields.