Hi, here is a function which is about 8 x faster than the one described in the PostgreSQL SQL Tricks ( http://postgres.cz/wiki/PostgreSQL_SQL_Tricks#Function_for_decoding_of_url_code ) The idea is to handle each encoded/not_encoded parts in bulk rather than spliting on each character. urldecode_arr: Seq Scan on lt_referrer (actual time=1.966..17623.979 rows=65717 loops=1) urldecode: Seq Scan on lt_referrer (actual time=4.846..144445.292 rows=65717 loops=1) regards, Marc Mamin CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION urldecode_arr(url text) RETURNS text AS $BODY$ DECLARE ret text; BEGIN BEGIN WITH STR AS ( SELECT -- array with all non encoded parts, prepend with '' when the string start is encoded case when $1 ~ '^%[0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F]' then array[''] end || regexp_split_to_array ($1,'(%[0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F])+', 'i') plain, -- array with all encoded parts array(select (regexp_matches ($1,'((?:%[0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F])+)', 'gi'))[1]) encoded ) SELECT string_agg(plain[i] || coalesce( convert_from(decode(replace(encoded[i], '%',''), 'hex'), 'utf8'),''),'') FROM STR, (SELECT generate_series(1, array_upper(encoded,1)+2) i FROM STR)blah INTO ret; EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN raise notice 'failed: %',url; return $1; END; RETURN coalesce(ret,$1); -- when the string has no encoding; END; $BODY$ LANGUAGE plpgsql IMMUTABLE STRICT -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general