i prefer symbols as well, but and will most likely ignore like's existence. (my vote is for keep symbols and idc about like)

the like syntax is, as mentioned, more common to SQL users

i think this might be more of a problem than a upside, since nu's like uses regex while sql's like uses whatever this is.
while yes it is a better search-term i think it might result in people getting annoyed when a familiar command works the wrong way (i already get frusted from things which produce good errors like if (foo == bar) return; (java) vs if foo == bar {return;} (rust))

it might result in people getting annoyed when a familiar command works the wrong way

I think you overestimate the annoyance. Nushell doesn't support select * nor select ... from, the two most common parts of an SQL query, and yet people seem to be ok with that.

Agreed. I'm in the inverse camp of "keep =~, I don't care about like".

It would be nice if GitHub polls supported multiple choices.

You have my vote

I added like because it's closer to sql, while not regex it's close due to using % as wildcards and other things. Then I needed to add the inverse so not-like seemed reasonable. I find =~ and !~ a pain to type.

That does make sense, I just prefer the consistency. Personally, I don't like =~ either; I prefer a regex type with dedicated regex functions/methods (eg. my_regex.match(string)), but that's not really much of an option here.