sql - Difference between LIKE and ~ in Postgres

Question

I've been instructed "not to bother with LIKE" and use ~ instead. What is wrong with LIKE and how is ~ different?

Does ~ have a name in this context or do people say "use the tilde operator"?

Answer 1

~ is the regular expression operator, and has the capabilities implied by that. You can specify a full range of regular expression wildcards and quantifiers; see the documentation for details. It is certainly more powerful than LIKE, and should be used when that power is needed, but they serve different purposes.