Using a variable in the 'LIKE' part of a WHERE clause

Question

How would I go about achieving this?
I have SELECT...WHERE person_number LIKE '123%';
While keeping the percent symbol, how would I substitute and explicit value with an implicit reference to a variable I have already assigned a value to?
Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

not sure if this is what you require, but you can simply concatenate your variable with '%'
for example;
SQL> select * from emp1 where job like 'A%';
     EMPNO JOB                  START_DAT        SAL       DEPT
         3 Author
      4444 AUTHOR               24-MAY-10       5001          3
      3333 ANALYST              24-MAY-09       5004          2
SQL> variable prefix char(1);
SQL> exec :prefix :='A';
SQL> select * from emp1 where job like :prefix||'%';
     EMPNO JOB                  START_DAT        SAL       DEPT
         3 Author
      4444 AUTHOR               24-MAY-10       5001          3
      3333 ANALYST              24-MAY-09       5004          2