What's the correct sql command to find exact matches?

Question

The below code will obviously search for similar results as the query variable but what is the SQL command to search for exact results and not "like"?

$query = "SELECT languages.language FROM languages WHERE language LIKE '%".$name."%'";

Answer 1

have you tried the = operator and removing the % wild cards?

Answer 2

Edit: Although I answered what you asked, it is worth pointing out, as others have said, that your code is vulnerable to SQL injection attacks :)

For exact matches:

$query = "SELECT languages.language FROM languages WHERE language ='".$name."'";

For non matches:

$query = "SELECT languages.language FROM languages WHERE language <> '".$name."'";