On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, Osvaldo Rosario Kussama wrote:
> Jeff Frost escreveu:
>> I've got an interesting one...I'm trying to find columns that have three or
>> fewer distinct characters (for example, "aaaaaaaaaa"). Wondering if I need
>> to write a function or if someone has an idea how to do it with built in
>> functions and/or pattern matching?
>>
>> I think the thing to do would be to lowercase everything, then remove all
>> duplicate chars and spaces, then use length() on that, but it's not obvious
>> to me how I might remove the duplicate chars with the pattern matching
>> support in the docs.
>>
>
> Try:
> SELECT
> array_to_string(array(
> SELECT DISTINCT lower(substr('aabbcdddef AB',i,1))
> FROM generate_series(1,length('aabbcdddef AB'))
> s(i))
> , '');
>
Osvaldo, that appears to work perfectly! Thank you much!
--
Jeff Frost, Owner <jeff@frostconsultingllc.com>
Frost Consulting, LLC http://www.frostconsultingllc.com/
Phone: 650-780-7908 FAX: 650-649-1954