Thread: postgres 6.3.2 and regexp

This may have been dealt with before, but I'm encountering a problem with regexp selects in postgres 6.3.2.  Is this a
knownbug?  
 

If I insert a value of '*test*' into an field and do a select like:

select * from table where 'This is a test entry'::text~*field;

I get a reply of:

ERROR:  regcomp failed with error repetition-operator operand invalid

This happens anytime the text has a * as the first character. 

-- 
Bill Brandt                                   
brandtwr@draaw.net                              http://www.draaw.net/

Bill Brandt <brandtwr-pgsql@draaw.net> writes:
> This may have been dealt with before, but I'm encountering a problem
> with regexp selects in postgres 6.3.2.  Is this a known bug?
> ERROR:  regcomp failed with error repetition-operator operand invalid
> This happens anytime the text has a * as the first character. 

No bug there.  Better go reread the documentation about regular
expressions again.  (Hint: they're not the same as shell wildcards.)
        regards, tom lane

On Sun, 18 Apr 1999, Bill Brandt wrote:

> ERROR:  regcomp failed with error repetition-operator operand invalid
> 
> This happens anytime the text has a * as the first character. 

That's because in regular expressions '*' matches zero or more consecutive
occurrences of the previous character, which can't be found when '*' is
the first character in the string.  It's not like unix wildcards.

Maybe you should use 'test' instead of '*test*', because regular
expressions match every string that has the regexp in it, regardless of
what's before and after the regexp in the string.

Moreover, regular expression matching is usually done the other way round,
i.e. "SELECT * FROM table WHERE field ~ 'regexp';".

Hope it helps... Guido

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