How "LIKE" by LONG VARCHAR?
Vertica documentation about LONG datatypes, in either version 7.1 or 8.0 states:

Notes
For optimal performance of LONG data types, HP Vertica recommends that you:

Use the LONG data types as storage only containers; HP Vertica does not support operations on their content.
Use the VARBINARY and VARCHAR data types, instead of their LONG counterparts, whenever possible. The VARBINARY and VARCHAR data types are more flexible and have a wider range of operations.


VARCHAR datatype supports up to 65K bytes long strings. You could use that instead, if the data are not longer.