Sean Davis wrote:

> Yes, this is a fine place to ask your question.Â*Â*SometimesÂ*itÂ*doesÂ*take
> a day or two to get an answer.Â*Â*WillÂ*quote_literalÂ*doÂ*whatÂ*youÂ*wan t?
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/i...ns-string.html
>
> Search on that page for quote_literal.
>

Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately quote_literal is not what I am
looking for, in fact it quotes special characters in the sense of strings,
not in the sense of regular expressions. Here's some example to explain my
problem a little better:

I would like to select strings that begin with 'a.', so I do NOT want the
following (suppose 'a.' is generic user input)

relfs=# select true where 'aa' ~ ('a.'||'.*');
bool
------
t

I could as well use 'a\\.', but what characters should I escape? Surely
$^+.*[] and possibly others. The function quote_literal does:

relfs=# select true where 'aa' ~ (quote_literal('a.')||'.*');
bool
------
(0 righe)

but it's mere illusion In fact we have:

relfs=# select true where '\'aa\'' ~ (quote_literal('a.')||'.*');
bool
------
t

Thanks for any suggestions

Vincenzo

--
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Attenzione: non leggo l'indirizzo di posta usato nel campo from, ma leggo
vincenzo_ml at yahoo dot it


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