On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > Re-added to open items: > > Fix SIMILAR TO to be ANSI compliant or remove it (Peter, Tom)
Tke that @#$@$@@$@#$ thing out of there until its actually been fully discussed ... you are starting to remind me of Charlie Brown ... this, I think, was Thomas' whole point, in that things are added way too faster and easily without fully understanding all of the ramifications ... let a discussion cool down *before* you take things off, or add things to, the list ... > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Tom Lane wrote: > > "Marc G. Fournier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > I'm in agreement with Thomas here ... unless a problem has been defined a > > > bit more specifically then 'it isn't posix compliant', it shouldn't be > > > considered an open item ... please remove? > > > > A quick review of SQL99 says that their notion of SIMILAR TO patterns > > is an unholy witches' brew: it does *both* common-or-garden regexp > > expressions and LIKE patterns. Specifically, I see these > > metacharacters: > > > > | OR (regexp-ish) > > > > * repeat 0 or more times (regexp-ish) > > > > + repeat 1 or more times (regexp-ish) > > > > % match any character sequence (like LIKE) > > > > _ match any one character (like LIKE) > > > > [...] almost-but-not-quite-regexp-ish character class > > > > (...) grouping (regexp-ish) > > > > plus a just-like-LIKE treatment of a selectable escape character. > > > > But the most important variation from common regex practice is that > > (if I'm reading the spec correctly) the pattern must match to the > > entire target string --- ie, it's effectively both left- and right- > > anchored. This is like LIKE patterns but utterly unlike common regexp > > usage. > > > > I could live with the fact that our regexp patterns don't implement all > > of the spec-mandated metacharacters. But I do not think we can ignore > > the difference in anchoring behavior. This is not a subset of the spec > > behavior, it is just plain wrong. > > > > I vote with Peter: we fix this or we disable it before 7.3 release. > > It is not anywhere near spec compliant, and we will be doing no one > > a favor by releasing it in the current state. > > > > regards, tom lane > > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > > TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster > > > > -- > Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us > [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 > + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road > + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
