SIMILAR TO bug?

Started by David Fetteralmost 17 years ago2 messages
#1David Fetter
david@fetter.org

Folks,

Perhaps I've misunderstood this, but in PostgreSQL 8.3.5, I get
disparate results from ~ and SIMILAR TO. For example:

This gives an unexpected result:

davidfetter@davidfetter=# SELECT 'abc' SIMILAR TO '^[a]';
?column?
----------
f
(1 row)

This one is what I expected.

davidfetter@davidfetter=# SELECT 'abc' ~ '^[a]';
?column?
----------
t
(1 row)

Did I misunderstand what SIMILAR TO does, or...?

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

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#2Peter Eisentraut
peter_e@gmx.net
In reply to: David Fetter (#1)
Re: SIMILAR TO bug?

David Fetter wrote:

Folks,

Perhaps I've misunderstood this, but in PostgreSQL 8.3.5, I get
disparate results from ~ and SIMILAR TO. For example:

This gives an unexpected result:

davidfetter@davidfetter=# SELECT 'abc' SIMILAR TO '^[a]';
?column?
----------
f
(1 row)

This one is what I expected.

davidfetter@davidfetter=# SELECT 'abc' ~ '^[a]';
?column?
----------
t
(1 row)

Did I misunderstand what SIMILAR TO does, or...?

Well, SIMILAR TO is not the same thing as ~. For example, ^ is not a
special character in its pattern language.