Patrick,
> Currently I have a perl script that I use to cleanse text fields in a
> file
> for use in our mainframe. I would like to do this as a function and
> bypass
> using perl if possible. Is this possible? I do not have plperl
> installed
> on the database due to server restrictions.
> Example of current perl statement:
I'm afraid that you really need PL/Perl or PL/Tcl for this.
While it would be possible to do the text replacement with PL/pgSQL or
pglibq, it would be much, much slower -- basically, you'd need to loop
through the text character-by-character and test each character for the
correct types. If you want an example of this approach, search the
archives of the SQL list for the STRIPNUMERIC function which I posted
some time ago.
Perl and Tcl are known for their superior text-processing capabilities
for a reason.
-Josh Berkus
