Re: [HACKERS] regular expressions from hell

On Mon, 1 June 1998, at 10:16:35, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> > Ok, my vote is to build regexes into the pgsql binary or into a .so that
> > we distribute. There should be no need to have perl installed on a system
> > to run postgresql. If we are going to extend the language to improve on
> > the very lame sql92 like clause, we need to have it be part of the system
> > that can be counted on, not something you might or might not have depending
> > on what else is installed.

I'm not suggesting we require perl to be installed to run postgres, or
replace the current regexp implementation with perl.  i was just
lamenting the fact that there are no less than 10 different regexp
implementations, with different metacharacters.  why should I have to
remember one syntax when I use perl, one for sed, one for emacs, and
another for postgresql?  this isn't a problem with postgres per se,
just the fact that there seems to be no standard.

I love perl regex's.  I'm merely suggesting (and planning on
implementing) a different set of regexp operators (not included with
postgres, but as a contrib module) that use perl regex's.  There are
some pros and cons, which have been discussed.

It should be there for people who want it.

>
> We already have it as ~, just not with Perl extensions.  Our
> implementation is very slow, and the author has said he is working on a
> rewrite, though no time frame was given.