Re: Adding an alternate syntax for Phrase Search

On 22 May 2016 at 18:52, Josh berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> This came up at pgCon.
>
> The 'word <-> word <-> word' syntax for phrase search is not
> developer-friendly.  While we need the <-> operator for SQL and for the
> sophisticated cases, it would be really good to support an alternate
> syntax for the simplest case of "words next to each other".  My proposal
> is enclosing the phrase in double-quotes, which would be intuitive to
> users and familiar from search engines.  Thus:
>
> to_tsquery(' Berkus & "PostgreSQL Version 10.0" ')
>
> ... would be equivalent to:
>
> to_tsquery(' Berkus & ( PostgreSQL <-> version <-> 10.0 )')
>
> I realize we're already in beta, but pgCon was actually the first time I
> saw the new syntax.  I think if we don't do this now, we'll be doing it
> for 10.0.

I think it's way too late for that.  I don't see a problem with
including it for 10.0, but when the feature freeze has long passed and
we also have our first beta out, it's no longer a matter of changing
the design or additional functionality, unless there's something that
absolutely requires modification.  This isn't that.

Thom