How to Escape Square Brackets When Searching Text in SQL Server Stored Procedures?

Handling Square Brackets in SQL Server Stored Procedure Text Searches

Searching for text within SQL Server stored procedures, using sys.sql_modules and sys.objects, can be tricky when dealing with square brackets. Standard searches often fail to find bracketed text correctly.

The solution is to escape the square brackets using the ESCAPE clause with the LIKE operator. This tells SQL Server to treat the backslash as an escape character, preventing the brackets from being interpreted as wildcard characters.

Here's the corrected query:

SELECT DISTINCT
       o.name AS Object_Name,
       o.type_desc
FROM sys.sql_modules m
INNER JOIN sys.objects o ON m.object_id = o.object_id
WHERE m.definition LIKE '%\[ABD\]%' ESCAPE '\';

The ESCAPE '' clause signifies that a backslash () preceding a square bracket will treat the bracket as a literal character, ensuring accurate matching of the bracketed text "[ABD]". Without escaping, the brackets would be interpreted as special characters, leading to incorrect search results.

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