SQL Wildcards for space or nothing

Question

I am using wildcards in a join statement to find when a specific phrase is contained in a text field. Originally, I tried something like:

[Text Field] LIKE '%[^0-9A-Z]' + [Phrase] + '[^0-9A-Z]%'

However, this only gives me results that contain the phrase inside of the text field surrounded by spaces or special characters. Instead I need it to be when the phrase is surrounded by a leading or trailing space, or if the phrase is at the beginning or end of text field. Does anyone have any idea on how to accomplish this? I have searched around to no avail.

Answer 1

Presumably, you are using SQL Server. Just add spaces to the beginning and end of the column:

' ' + [Text Field] + ' ' LIKE '%[^0-9A-Z]' + [Phrase] + '[^0-9A-Z]%'