>Is it possible to use the $ operator in an SQL statement? I would like to create an SQL to select records where a certain character string is contained anywhere within one of the character fields of my table.
>
>If it's not possible to use the $ operator in SQL, is there another way to do it?

Sure it's possible. You can also use SQL equivalent of $ - LIKE operator

...
  WHERE lcSearchString $ myfield
*
...
  WHERE myfield LIKE "%" + lcSearchString + "%"

Keep in mind that either condition is not be optimizable.