MySQL LIKE vs LOCATE: Which is More Efficient?

When performing pattern matching queries in MySQL, you have two main options: the LIKE operator and the LOCATE function. Which one performs faster?

To answer this question, let's compare the performance of these two approaches using a simple benchmark. The following query uses the LIKE operator to find rows where a column contains a specific text:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE column LIKE '%text%';

The following query uses the LOCATE function to perform the same operation:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE LOCATE('text',column)>0;

Running these queries against a large dataset shows that the LIKE operator is marginally faster, primarily because it avoids the additional comparison (> 0) required by LOCATE. Here are the results from a benchmark:

mysql> SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000,LOCATE('foo','foobar'));
 --------------------------------------------- 
| BENCHMARK(100000000,LOCATE('foo','foobar')) |
 --------------------------------------------- 
|                                           0 |
 --------------------------------------------- 
1 row in set (3.24 sec)

mysql> SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000,LOCATE('foo','foobar') > 0);
 ------------------------------------------------- 
| BENCHMARK(100000000,LOCATE('foo','foobar') > 0) |
 ------------------------------------------------- 
|                                               0 |
 ------------------------------------------------- 
1 row in set (4.63 sec)


mysql> SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000,'foobar' LIKE '%foo%');
 -------------------------------------------- 
| BENCHMARK(100000000,'foobar' LIKE '%foo%') |
 -------------------------------------------- 
|                                          0 |
 -------------------------------------------- 
1 row in set (4.28 sec)

mysql> SELECT @@version;
 ---------------------- 
| @@version            |
 ---------------------- 
| 5.1.36-community-log |
 ---------------------- 
1 row in set (0.01 sec)