Thanks. I'll check it out asap. I didn't realize the regex expressions needed to be escaped for it to be a valid expression. I thought it was the other way around. Would it be possible to choose what paragraph to use in a summary? I'll try to clarify... Let's say I have 14 paragraphs of lorem lipsum text. Let's say I want to show the 3rd paragraph... Could I use a regex to search the content and return that 3rd paragraph to use as a summary of that article? --- Michael Fuhr <mike@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 11:40:18PM -0700, Matthew > Peter wrote: > > I'm trying to do a slice directly from a table so > I > > can get a brief preview of the articles content by > > counting \s (spaces), not new paragraphs. > > Are you trying to extract the first N words from a > string? If > that's not what you mean then please clarify. > > > Anyone know how it could be done using regular > > expressions natively? I read the doc but it didn't > > help me much. > > Regular expressions aren't the only way to solve the > problem, but > maybe the following example will give you some > ideas: > > CREATE TABLE article (id integer, content text); > > INSERT INTO article VALUES (1, 'one'); > INSERT INTO article VALUES (2, 'one two'); > INSERT INTO article VALUES (3, 'one two three'); > INSERT INTO article VALUES (4, 'one two three > four'); > INSERT INTO article VALUES (5, 'one two three four > five'); > INSERT INTO article VALUES (6, 'one two three four > five six'); > > SELECT id, substring(content FROM > '(([^[:space:]]+[[:space:]]*){1,3})') > FROM article; > id | substring > ----+---------------- > 1 | one > 2 | one two > 3 | one two three > 4 | one two three > 5 | one two three > 6 | one two three > (6 rows) > > In PostgreSQL 7.4 and later you could shorten the > regular expression: > > SELECT id, substring(content FROM > '((\\S+\\s*){1,3})') > FROM article; > > If this example isn't what you're looking for then > please explain > what you're trying to do. > > -- > Michael Fuhr > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq