Does a FULLTEXT index speed up LIKE conditions?

Question

We have a system that is migrating from an older VARCHAR using LIKE setup to one that uses FULLTEXT indexes. So far everyone is enjoying the switch, but we still have some code that isn't catered to the FULLTEXT queries.

Currently we have a column that is a VARCHAR(255) and we want to remove the 255 character limit. What will happen to areas that are using the LIKE queries?

Answer 1

A fulltext index does not help to speed up queries using LIKE.

But an ordinary index can speed up LIKE conditions that start with a fixed string, for example LIKE 'FOO%'.