What purpose does the LIKE statement serve in SQL?

The LIKE statement in SQL is specifically designed to search for a particular pattern within a column of data. It allows users to filter records based on a specified string pattern, which can include wildcards. For example, the percent sign (%) can be used to represent zero or more characters, while an underscore (_) can represent a single character. This makes the LIKE statement particularly useful for querying text fields where the exact match is not required, such as finding all names that start with "A" or contain a specific substring.

Using LIKE enhances the flexibility of data retrieval, enabling more nuanced searches beyond equality checks, which is crucial in many database operations where pattern matching is necessary.