Re: patch adding new regexp functions

On Sat, 17 Feb 2007, Tom Lane wrote:

> Jeremy Drake <pgsql(at)jdrake(dot)com> writes:
> > On Sat, 17 Feb 2007, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> So I'd vote against complicating the API in order to make special
> >> provision for these results. I claim that all we need is a function
> >> taking (string text, pattern text, flags text) and returning either
> >> array of text or setof text
>
> > For this function, it would be setof array of text, as the capture groups
> > would definitely go in an array, but if you asked for global in the flags,
> > there could be more than one match in the string.
>
> Oh, right. And you could do a 2-D array if you wanted it all in one
> blob (or a guarantee of order).

I don't think that there is much of an argument for having this one return
a 2d array, in this particular case, even perl requires you to build a
loop, IIRC.

my $str = 'foobarbecuebazilbarf';
while($str=~/(b[^b]+)(b[^b]+)/g) {
print $1, "\t", length($1), "\n";
print $2, "\t", length($2), "\n";
print "---\n";
}

bar 3
becue 5
---
bazil 5
barf 4
---

> So no need for record-returning functions?
No.

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