Finding pattern according to variable content - php

Question

I would like to do something quite simple but I dont know the right code in php.
I have a variable $go which content is GO:xxxxx
I would like to query that if the content of a variable has the pattern "GO:" and something else, echo something, but if not, echo another thing
I want to declare an if statement like:
if (preg_match('/GO/', $go) {
echo "something";
}
else {
echo "another thing";
But I cannot make it work...
I want to embed this statement between this portion of my script:
$result = mysqli_query($enlace,"select count(distinct name2) as total from " . $table . " where go_id like '%" . $go . "%'");
$items = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);
echo "<br/>";
echo "<b> The total number of genes according to GO code is:</b> " . $items['total'];
mysqli_free_result($result);
$result2 = mysqli_query($enlace,"select count(distinct name2) as total from " . $table . " where db_object_name like '%" . $go . "%'");
$items2 = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result2);
echo "<br/>";
echo "<b>The total number of genes according to GO association is:</b> " . $items2['total'];
mysqli_free_result($result2);
As it is right now, the variable $go can have a value like GO:xxxx or a random sentence, and, with this code, I get two strings, one with value 0 and another with value according to the total apperances matching $go content.
What I want is to declare an if statement so that it just prints one string, the one that has the number of matches according to $go content, but not both.
Any help?

Answer 1

Use strpos():
if (strpos($go, 'GO:') !== false) {
echo 'true';
}

Answer 2

Try this
echo (!strpos($go, 'GO:')) ? "another thing" : "something";
Will surely work