How can I tell if a VARCHAR variable contains a substring?

Question

I thought it was CONTAINS, but that\'s not working for me.

I\'m looking to do this:

IF CONTAINS(@stringVar, \'thisstring\')
   ...
<         


        

Answer 1

Instead of LIKE (which does work as other commenters have suggested), you can alternatively use CHARINDEX:

declare @full varchar(100) = 'abcdefg'
declare @find varchar(100) = 'cde'
if (charindex(@find, @full) > 0)
    print 'exists'