how can i join strings when they are not equal to 100?

Question

I can build and test only with Access database SQL. Consider:

SELECT Table1.*, Table2.*
FROM Table1, Table2
WHERE (((Table1.T1) Like [Table2].[T2] & "*"));

Or

Extract the key value from first table string.

SELECT IIf(Instr(T1," ")>0,Left([T1],InStr([T1]," ")-1), T1) AS D, F1 FROM Table1;

Join that query to second table.

SELECT Table2.*, Query1.* FROM Query1 INNER JOIN Table2 ON Query1.D = Table2.T2;

Consistency of structure is critical when parsing strings. Any variation will complicate the extraction.

I don’t know if one approach will be faster than other with large dataset.