Re: [GENERAL] Regular expression. How to disable ALL meta-character

[David Gagnon]

Michael Fuhr wrote:
On Wed, Apr 20, 2005 at 11:28:28AM -0400, David Gagnon wrote:
 

I have a web interface with offers a search field.  This search field 
will look for the string X in 12 different columns.  If the string is 
found anywhere I return the row.

The problem is that the user is eable to put spacial character like : [* 
This create invalid regular expression and make my sql crash.
ICNUM~* #descriptionOrKeyword#

Is there a way to disable all meta-character.
   

Why are you doing a regular expression search if you don't want to
allow regular expressions?
 

Maybe there is a simple way to to this but I want find string X in 
different column.  The search must not be case sensitive.

So that searching "aBc" in  "abcDef" return true.  I don't want 
META-CHaracter.  Or at least I don't want meta-character to cause errors 
(i.e.: No

ERROR:  invalid regular expression: brackets [] not balanced.

Thanks for your help
/David




I found this in the manual .. but haven't found example :-(:
: ....with ***=, the rest of the RE is taken to be a literal string, 
with all characters considered ordinary characters.
   

Read again the entire sentence, especially the first few words:
 If an RE begins with ***=, the rest of the RE is taken to be a
 literal string, with all characters considered ordinary characters.
Here are some examples:
SELECT 'test string' ~ 'test[*';
ERROR:  invalid regular expression: brackets [] not balanced
SELECT 'test string' ~ '***=test[*';
?column? 
----------
f
(1 row)

SELECT 'test[* string' ~ '***=test[*';
?column? 
----------
t
(1 row)

 


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