First off, I recognize the differences between the two:
- Like makes available the wildcards % and _
- significant trailing whitespace
- colation issues

All other things being equal, for an exact string match which is more efficient:

SELECT field WHERE 'a' = 'a';

Or:

SELECT field WHERE 'a' LIKE 'a';

Or: Is the difference so insignificant that it doesn't matter?

mysql string performance
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