MySQL IN Condition

The MySQL IN condition is used to reduce the use of multiple OR conditions in a SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statement.

Syntax:

expression IN (value1, value2, .... value_n);  

Parameters

expression: It specifies a value to test.

value1, value2, … or value_n: These are the values to test against expression. If any of these values matches expression, then the IN condition will evaluate to true. This is a quick method to test if any one of the values matches expression.

MySQL IN Example

Consider a table “officers”, having the following data.

Execute the following query:

  SELECT *  

FROM officers  

WHERE officer_name IN ('Ajeet', 'Vimal', 'Deepika');  

Output:

Let’s see why it is preferred over OR condition:

Execute the following query:

  SELECT *  

FROM officers  

WHERE officer_name = 'Ajeet'  

OR officer_name = 'Vimal'  

OR officer_name = 'Deepika';  

Output:

It also produces the same result. So IN condition is preferred over OR condition because it has minimum number of codes.