[PATCH] Use Boyer-Moore-Horspool for simple LIKE contains patterns

Great idea, love seeing the speedups! Also appreciate the background,
detailed explanation, and benchmarks. Quick code review:

git grep shows we already use BMH in src/backend/utils/adt/varlena.c
Worth acknowledging that in a code comment somewhere? I didn't see any
obvious advantage to refactoring things out at quick glance, but a mention
might be nice.

+ * by '%' wildcards. Remove backslash escapes while building the search

state.

Slightly off comment. This is for like_bmh_pattern_is_eligible - we are not
removing here, just skipping things when we count.

if (i + 1 >= plen - 1)

Worth a comment to explain that we are catching the '%foo\%' case here.

pattern_stable = get_fn_expr_arg_stable(flinfo, 1);

/*
* ScalarArrayOpExpr invokes the operator once per array element. The
* array expression can be stable while the pattern passed to this function
* changes between calls, so it must not use a cached search state.
*/
if (flinfo->fn_expr != NULL && IsA(flinfo->fn_expr, ScalarArrayOpExpr))
pattern_stable = false;

My first thought was to make this an if/else so we don't reclobber, but
seeing how later on we check collation every time, I'm wondering if we
shouldn't just check the pattern as well every time via a memcmp like
regexp.c does in RE_compile_and_cache (and remove that block above). So we
store it verbatim in the like_bmh_init() function with memcpy, then make
the check inside like_bmh_match() that looks like this:

unlikely(collation has changed)

into:

unlikely(
collation has changed
OR pattern length has changed
OR pattern itself has changed (e.g. memcmp true)
)

Also means you could then roll get_fn_expr_arg_stable into that big old ||
grouping, and remove pattern_stable entirely.

Hm...that collation test and message is already caught and done by
GenericMatchText, so you could throw !OidIsValid(collation) into that ||
group as well, and remove the ereport section entirely. It then falls
through later to GenericMatchText, which complains about the collation
there.

Anyway, the patch compiled cleanly against d15a6bc2 (Tue Jul 14 10:28:04
2026 +0200)

It did have one test failure:

@@ -151,8 +151,8 @@
p | matched
--------+---------
%abcd% | t
- %b%e% | f
%b_d% | t
+ %b%e% | f
%wxyz% | f
(4 rows)

I think it's from the "Row-varying patterns must use the generic matcher."
test.

Cheers,
Greg

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the careful review. I have attached a v2 patch.

git grep shows we already use BMH in src/backend/utils/adt/varlena.c
Worth acknowledging that in a code comment somewhere? I didn't see any
obvious advantage to refactoring things out at quick glance, but a mention
might be nice.

Agreed. I added a comment at the top of like_bmh.c that cross-references
the
existing Boyer-Moore-Horspool implementation in varlena.c and explains why I
kept the implementations separate. The varlena.c code searches one
(haystack, needle) pair with an adaptively sized skip table, whereas the
LIKE
path interprets its internal backslash escapes while extracting the literal
and caches the prepared search state in FmgrInfo for use across rows. I did
not find a clean way to share that machinery without introducing more
coupling
than seemed useful.

+ * by '%' wildcards.  Remove backslash escapes while building the search
+ * state.

Slightly off comment. This is for like_bmh_pattern_is_eligible - we are

not

removing here, just skipping things when we count.

Right. I reworded the comment to say that the eligibility check skips
backslash escapes while counting the literal length. The escapes are
removed
later, when the search state is built.

if (i + 1 >= plen - 1)

Worth a comment to explain that we are catching the '%foo\%' case here.

Added. The new comment explains that this rejects patterns such as
'%foo\%', where the backslash escapes the closing '%' rather than a literal
byte.

pattern_stable = get_fn_expr_arg_stable(flinfo, 1);

/*
* ScalarArrayOpExpr invokes the operator once per array element. The
* array expression can be stable while the pattern passed to this

function

* changes between calls, so it must not use a cached search state.
*/
if (flinfo->fn_expr != NULL && IsA(flinfo->fn_expr, ScalarArrayOpExpr))
pattern_stable = false;

My first thought was to make this an if/else so we don't reclobber, but
seeing how later on we check collation every time, I'm wondering if we
shouldn't just check the pattern as well every time via a memcmp like
regexp.c does in RE_compile_and_cache (and remove that block above).
So we store it verbatim in the like_bmh_init() function with memcpy, then
make the check inside like_bmh_match() that looks like this:

unlikely(collation has changed)

into:

unlikely(
collation has changed
OR pattern length has changed
OR pattern itself has changed (e.g. memcmp true)
)

Also means you could then roll get_fn_expr_arg_stable into that big old ||
grouping, and remove pattern_stable entirely.

I implemented the suggested verbatim-pattern cache and benchmarked it
directly
against the initial patch's structural-stability design. The test scanned
two
million rows per transaction, with a warmup followed by the median of seven
pgbench runs of 40 transactions each. The benchmark used an AMD EPYC 7763
host with 8 vCPUs, GCC 11.4.0, and an -O2 -g build, using a UTF-8 database
with C locale. The results below are median latency per scan:

case initial patch memcmp vs. initial
------------------------------------ ------------- -------- -----------
constant, 4-byte literal 63.7 ms 65.1 ms +2.3%
constant, 32-byte literal 48.8 ms 48.4 ms -0.8%
constant, 4-byte literal, 8-byte input 43.2 ms 44.0 ms +1.8%
non-constant, fixed value at runtime 92.9 ms 57.0 ms -38.6%
non-constant, changes on every row 91.6 ms 172.4 ms +88.2%

The per-row length check and memcmp were therefore not particularly
expensive
for stable constant patterns. The more important tradeoff involved
non-constant patterns. When the value remained fixed at runtime, the
verbatim
cache was faster because it could use BMH. When the pattern changed on
every
row, however, it was substantially slower than the initial patch, which
sends
that case to the existing generic matcher. The verbatim variant had to
repeat
the eligibility check and rebuild the 256-entry skip table for every row.

I then tested a hybrid of the two approaches. Patterns that
get_fn_expr_arg_stable() identifies as a Const or external Param keep the
existing comparison-free search state. An eligible non-stable pattern
stores
its verbatim bytes and is revalidated with a length check and memcmp. On
the
first mismatch, the state is changed permanently to the generic marker. The
mismatching row and all later rows use the existing matcher; the eligibility
check and skip-table build are never repeated.

ScalarArrayOpExpr still has to be classified as non-stable, since its array
expression can be a Const while the operator receives a different element on
each call. It now uses the same revalidation path and falls back
permanently
if the elements differ.

I reran the comparison on aarch64 using two clean build trees based on the
same source revision and configured with the same options. Both servers
used
the same data directory. The table contained two million 32-byte strings, a
fixed pattern column, and an alternating pattern column. Parallel query was
disabled, each server was warmed before measurement, and the server order
was
alternated in ABBA order. The figures below are medians of 16 EXPLAIN
(ANALYZE, TIMING OFF) runs:

case initial patch hybrid vs. initial
-------------------------------- ------------- -------- -----------
constant pattern 194.1 ms 185.6 ms -4.4%
non-constant, fixed at runtime 299.8 ms 199.9 ms -33.3%
non-constant, changes every row 303.4 ms 304.9 ms +0.5%
generic fallback control 288.5 ms 289.5 ms +0.3%

The constant-pattern difference appears to be a compiler-dependent
code-layout
effect rather than a benefit of the hybrid design, so I do not interpret it
as
a general speedup. More importantly, the runtime-fixed case captures the
benefit of the verbatim cache, while the row-varying case tracks the generic
fallback control instead of rebuilding the 256-entry skip table for every
row.

The attached v2 patch uses this hybrid design. Thus the common stable path
does not pay a memcmp, runtime-fixed non-constant values can use BMH, and a
pattern that is observed to vary falls back without any rebuild penalty.

Hm...that collation test and message is already caught and done by
GenericMatchText, so you could throw !OidIsValid(collation) into that ||
group as well, and remove the ereport section entirely. It then falls
through later to GenericMatchText, which complains about the collation
there.

Done. The invalid-collation case is now included in the rejection group and
falls through to GenericMatchText. I removed the duplicate ereport block
from
like_bmh.c.

It did have one test failure:

@@ -151,8 +151,8 @@
p | matched
--------+---------
%abcd% | t
- %b%e% | f
%b_d% | t
+ %b%e% | f
%wxyz% | f
(4 rows)

I think it's from the "Row-varying patterns must use the generic matcher."
test.

Thanks for catching this. This was a locale-dependent sort-order issue in
the
test, not a matcher failure. The query now uses ORDER BY p COLLATE "C".

I retested the revised patch against PostgreSQL HEAD 0348090: all 246 core
regression tests passed, including like_bmh, and all four contrib/pg_trgm
tests passed.

Thanks,
Atsushi Ogawa

2026年7月15日(水) 3:29 Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com>: