Check if a string contains a substring in SQL Server 2005, using a stored procedure

I've a string, `@mainString = 'CATCH ME IF YOU CAN'`. I want to check whether the word `ME` is inside `@mainString`.

How do I check if a string has a specific substring in SQL?

You can just use wildcards in the predicate (after IF, WHERE or ON):

@mainstring LIKE '%' + @substring + '%'

or in this specific case

' ' + @mainstring + ' ' LIKE '% ME[., ]%'

(Put the spaces in the quoted string if you're looking for the whole word, or leave them out if ME can be part of a bigger word).

[`CHARINDEX()`][1] searches for a substring within a larger string, and returns the position of the match, or 0 if no match is found

if CHARINDEX('ME',@mainString) > 0
begin
--do something
end

*Edit* or from daniels answer, if you're wanting to find a word (and not subcomponents of words), your `CHARINDEX` call would look like:

CHARINDEX(' ME ',' ' + REPLACE(REPLACE(@mainString,',',' '),'.',' ') + ' ')

(Add more recursive REPLACE() calls for any other punctuation that may occur)

[1]:

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