Percentage sign (%) in an INSERT

Question

I have to change values into my database. One of the string values can contain a % sign.

Rough example:

UPDATE Mortgage 
SET TEXT = 'The interest rate is 7%';

The change is not saved in the database. How can I escape the percentage sign in SQL Server

Solution 1

UPDATE Mortgage SET TEXT = 'The interest rate is 7' + CHAR(37);

37 is the decimal ASCII code for a percent symbol.

Solution 2

You can use a custom escape character, for example:

UPDATE Mortgage 
SET TEXT = 'The interest rate is 7\%' ESCAPE '\';

But I think you didn't need to escape this character % here becouse it has no special meaning as an input value, but you have to escape it in case you want to use it in a LIKE query.