Re: non-static LIKE patterns

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 4:07 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> patrick keshishian <pkeshish@gmail.com> writes:
>> I need to match entries in second table to the first, so I use the
>> following in my WHERE clause:
>>       ... WHERE second.path LIKE first.path||'%'
>> This seemed to work at first, but it fails if the paths use
>> back-slashes (like Windows paths).
>
> By default, back-slash is a special character in LIKE patterns.
> You can change that with the ESCAPE option.  See
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/functions-matching.html#FUNCTIONS-LIKE

Thanks for the quick reply. Would be tough choosing another
"reasonable" ESCAPE character while dealing with paths. Will think
more about this.

Cheers,
--patrick