This code would make a handy little inline table valued function.

It currently filters out everything but letters and numbers.

Fairly quick, too.

declare @find varchar(50) = 'SET NOCOUNT ON'

declare @txt varchar(max) =

'Come and listen to my story bout a man named Jed

A poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed SET

NOCOUNT ON And then one day he was

shootin at some food, when up through the ground come

a-bubblin crude.';

set statistics time on;

with test as (select top(len(@txt)) ''+substring(@txt,N,1) as txtchar

from vtally)

SELECT 'EXISTS'

WHERE (select ''+txtchar

from test

where txtchar BETWEEN 'A' and 'Z'

or txtchar BETWEEN '0' and '9'

FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('./text()[1]', 'varchar(max)')

LIKE '%'+REPLACE(@find,Space(1),Space(0))+'%'

set statistics time off;