How to use LIKE on inet field in Postgres

Question

I need to perform the following query:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE ip LIKE '88.99.%';

The problem is that the inet datatype does not seems to support wildcards (at least not in the way I have utilized them in the preceding query).

What I'd like to know is whether it would be a smart move to convert the field into string before specifying the LIKE filter? (On the other hand, this would probably slow down the whole query, even if the approach itself was valid.)

Answer 1

Use subnet operators for such queries. '88.99.0.0/16' should do it :

SELECT * FROM users WHERE ip << inet '88.99.0.0/16';

Answer 2

Another option which worked for me if you want to do a string comparison is this:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE TEXT(ip) LIKE '88.99.%';

although it will be less efficient than "How to use LIKE on inet field in Postgres".

Reference: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/functions-net.html