I make use of generic views and I am attempting to query my MySQL db (utf8_bin collation) in a case insensitive manor to try to find all my song titles that start with a particular letter.

view.py

def tracks_by_title(request, starts_with):
    return object_list(
        request,
        queryset = Track.objects.filter(title__istartswith=starts_with),
        template_name = 'tlkmusic_base/titles_list.html',
        template_object_name = 'tracks',
        paginate_by = 25,
    )

and my

urls.py

urlpatterns = patterns('tlkmusic.apps.tlkmusic_base.views',
    (r'^titles/(?P<starts_with>\w)/$', tracks_by_title),
)

the query it produces according to the django debug toolbar is:

SELECT `tracks`.`id`, `tracks`.`url`, `tracks`.`artist`, `tracks`.`album`, `tracks`.`genre`, `tracks`.`year`, `tracks`.`title`, `tracks`.`comment`, `tracks`.`tracknumber`, `tracks`.`discnumber`, `tracks`.`bitrate`, `tracks`.`length`, `tracks`.`samplerate`, `tracks`.`filesize`, `tracks`.`createdate`, `tracks`.`modifydate` FROM `tracks` WHERE `tracks`.`title` LIKE a% LIMIT 1

specifically this line:

WHERE `tracks`.`title` LIKE a% LIMIT 1

Why is it not ILIKE which is what I was expecting by using __istartswith?

I am using Django 1.1.1 on Ubuntu.