Pfthb

I am trying to make a query that will search for accounts with a name similar or exactly matching a field value.

So for example I have "Sales-Force" in the field. There is an account called "Salesforce" or "Sales Force"

My current query

Select Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Name LIKE '%Sales-Force%'

This isn't returning my accounts named "Sales Force" or "Salesforce" in my query editor.

UPDATED * My Apex code

string accountName= record.Name;
 if(accountName.contains('-'))
 
 accountName = accountName.replace('-', '%');
 
 if(accountName.contains(' '))
 
 accountName = accountName.replace(' ', '%');
 
 accountName= '%' + accountName+ '%';

List<Account> accountLookup = new List<Account>();
accountLookup = [Select Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Name LIKE :accountName];

Have you considered:

Select Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Name LIKE '%Sales%Force%'

or:

String likeValue = '%Sales%Force%';

Account accounts = [Select Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Name LIKE :likeValue];

PS

Just noticed Oleksandr had posted this and deleted it: please clarify your question.

PPS

You could add some code that tries to generalize the pattern e.g. replaces non-alphabetic characters with a % and puts a % between each character. Or you could consider e.g. a Metaphone approach to the matching.

You can't do it. It is not possible to use value of a field in condition expression, as a value.

According to documentation

fieldExpression uses the following syntax:

fieldName comparisonOperator value

A value used to compare with the value in fieldName. You must supply a
value whose data type matches the field type of the specified field.
You must supply a native value—other field names or calculations are
not permitted. If quotes are required (for example, they are not for
dates and numbers), use single quotes. Double quotes result in an
error.

update

looks like it is XY problem, and I am sure desired result could be achieved by means of formula fields and other tools. Maybe you can post source of this question?

First off, here's the LIKE docs

LIKE Like Expression is true if the value in the specified fieldName
matches the characters of the text string in the specified value. The
LIKE operator in SOQL and SOSL is similar to the LIKE operator in SQL;
it provides a mechanism for matching partial text strings and includes
support for wildcards.

The % and _ wildcards are supported for the LIKE operator.
The % wildcard matches zero or more characters.
The _ wildcard matches exactly one character.
The text string in the specified value must be enclosed in single quotes.
The LIKE operator is supported for string fields only.
The LIKE operator performs a case-insensitive match, unlike the case-sensitive matching in SQL.
The LIKE operator in SOQL and SOSL supports escaping of special characters % or _.
Don’t use the backslash character in a search except to escape a special character.

For example, the following query matches Appleton, Apple, and Appl,
but not Bap

So for your query Select Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Name LIKE '%Sales-Force%', what you're asking for is all accounts with a name that contains 'Salesforce-Force', so that wouldn't match either accounts.

So to capture all of your examples you'd need this query
SELECT Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Name LIKE 'Sales_Force' OR Name LIKE 'SalesForce' which would match 'Sales-Force', 'Sales Force', 'SalesForce', or 'sAlEsFoRcE' (like is case-insensitive)