Hi, I'm using Firebird 1.5.3.
I'm trying to determine whether there is a way to do a wildcard search
in a (var)char field where the field may or may not contain multiple
words. (Ignore case-sensitive issues for now!)

Eg I am searching for "lane" and I only want to find records where a
word starts with "lane". Therefore I want to field containing
"checkout lane", "lane three" but not one with "planet" (so therefore
"%lane" will not discriminate enough for my purposes).
[I eventually also want to find "lane" if it is preceded by a
non-alpha character (eg - or /).]
So currently I have the bit of SQL:
"... where myfield like 'lane%' or myfield like '% lane%'"

This works, but adding "or myfield like '% lane%'" has degraded
performance significantly (especially on the MAC), and adding:
"or myfield like '%-lane%' or myfield like '%/lane%'"
seems cumbersome and inefficient, and makes the query speed worse.

Can anyone suggest a wildcard way of doing this and/or the most
efficient way to do this?

I gather in SQL Server (not familiar with it) you can do:
"... where myfield like 'lane%' or myfield like '%[^a-z]lane%'"

Is there something similar in firebird?
Is there more support for this in Firebird 2 (which we cannot yet move
to)?

Thanks in advance,
Phil