#!/usr/bin/perl 
use strict;

my $string = "something and something else or this thing here";
my @out = split(\s(AND|OR)\s/i,$string);
$string = "";
foreach my $i(@out) {
    if($i =~ /\s?(AND|OR)\s?/i) {
        my $tmp = uc($1); 
        $string .= " $tmp";
    }
    else {  
        $i =~ s/$i/ tools.description LIKE "\%$i%"/o;
        $string .= $i;
    }
}
print "$string\n";