Question

Hello I am looking for a function that is similar to the CONTAINS function however, it does not require the field to be full-text indexed. Basically I have a field which contains some codes delimited by a space like so ABC DEF GHI. I want to run a query and to see if DEF is in the field. How would I go about doing this?

Answer 1

Take a look at CHARINDEX. Note that I’ve added a space to the beginning and end of the column being searched to account for the case where your search string is first or last in the list.

SELECT *
    FROM YourTable
    WHERE CHARINDEX(' DEF ', ' ' + YourColumn + ' ') <> 0;