"Peter Darley" <pdarley@kinesis-cem.com> writes:
> I don't want to imply something about things I don't know anything about,
> but I'm interested in why nobody has suggested creating a new data type
> using CREATE TYPE, setting up it's various functions and creating new
> operators for it. It looks (reading the docs) like it would do what Russel
> wants without too much work. Is there some reason that folks avoid this
> approach?
That's what I was referring to at the end of the message you quoted.
The question is what you define as "too much work" ;-).
Given a C implementation of the required normalization function (I'm
assuming plain lower() won't really cut it), you'd need probably O(100)
lines of additional C code and a few dozen catalog entries to make it
happen. A couple hours work for someone who'd done it before, rather
longer for someone who hadn't ...
regards, tom lane