Thread: text_pattern_ops index not being used for prefix query

Indexing on a text column:

    create index index_documents_on_id_with_pattern_ops (id text_pattern_ops);

This works fine:

    > explain select id from documents where id like 'dingbat%';
    Index Only Scan using index_documents_on_id_with_pattern_ops on documents  (cost=0.56..8.58 rows=736 width=19)
      Index Cond: ((id >= 'dingbat'::text) AND (id < 'dingbau'::text))
      Filter: (id ~~ 'dingbat%'::text)

But for some reason, if an underscore character appears in my search string, it falls back to a disasterously slow
seqscan:

    > explain select id from documents where id like '_dingbat%';
    Seq Scan on documents  (cost=0.00..779238.28 rows=736 width=19)
      Filter: (id ~~ '_dingbat%'::text)

Is this because of PostgreSQL’s collation system? Using “C” doesn’t work either.

On 20 Oct 2016, at 23:37, Maxim Boguk <maxim.boguk@gmail.com> wrote:
> ​Underscore in like pattern have a special meaning of "any symbol".
> From documentation on the https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/functions-matching.html :
> "An underscore (_) in pattern stands for (matches) any single character;"
> This could be useful as well: "To match a literal underscore or percent sign without matching other characters, the
respectivecharacter in pattern must be preceded by the escape character.” 

Oops, how embarrassing. For some reason I thought PostgreSQL only had "%". Thanks for clearing that up.