Post: #3

yes, my table is indexed for the username column, and i used LIKE becus username is a string, and since = is technically a numeric expression and not made for comparing strings:

'Per the SQL standard, LIKE performs matching on a per-character basis, thus it can produce results different from the = comparison operator:'

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/s...tions.html

you are right in saying that the = will be faster, but according to MySQL, LIKE compares strings more accuratly than using the =