sql query using LIKE or MATCH - mysql

Question

I have a table of 13 columns , out of those i have 5 columns that contains let say string data or VARCHAR data.
Now i have a string let say "abc".
I want to write a sql query to get all the rows that have this "abc" string in those 5 columns. "abc" can be the data of the column of part of the data of the column.
I used LIKE function
SELECT * FROM table WHERE col1 OR col2 OR col3 OR col4 OR col5 LIKE '%abc%';
but it didnt worked n got back all the rows.
I dont know how use MATCH function either, I m nt good in sql. so can anyone help.

Answer 1

You can specify condition multiple times:
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE col1 LIKE '%abc%'
OR col2 LIKE '%abc%'
OR col3 LIKE '%abc%'
OR col4 LIKE '%abc%'
OR col5 LIKE '%abc%';
This will be really slow because you have multiple OR and non-SARGable condition.
Alternatively:
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE CONCAT_WS('^', col1,col2,col3,col4,col5) LIKE '%abc%';
Using MATCH (preferred solution that utilizes full-text index):
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE MATCH(col1, col2,col3,col4, col5) AGAINST ('abc');
SqlFiddleDemo
Keep in mind that to use MATCH you need to create index first:
ALTER TABLE tab ADD FULLTEXT ft_index_name (col1,col2,col3,col4,col5);