sql problem with LIKE

I am having a problem using LIKE with SELECT. In particular, I am trying to do a select in my sql script...   select .... LIKE x;
where x is a varchar2 variable whose contents are 19970121% if I replace the variable x with the quoted string '19970121%' it works fine, but the string variable x is evidentally "not equivalent" to the quoted string????
Don't know why the variable method doesn't work... Any advice?
Thanx Received on Tue Sep 16 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT