On Mon, Oct 24, 2005 at 09:02:26PM +0300, Andrus wrote: > I applied Michael hint about dollar quoting to this and tried > > create temp table customer ( email char(60)); > insert into customer values( 'steve@xxxxxxxxxxx'); > SELECT email FROM customer WHERE email !~* > $$ > ^[^@]*@(?:[^@]*\.)?[a-z0-9_-]+\.(?:a[defgilmnoqrstuwz]|b[abdefghijmnorstvwyz]|c[acdfghiklmnoruvxyz]|d[ejkmoz]|e[ceghrst]|f[ijkmorx]|g[abdefhilmnpqrstuwy]|h[kmnrtu]|i[delnoqrst]|j[mop]|k[eghimnprwyz]|l[abcikrstuvy]|m[acdghklmnopqrstuvwxyz]|n[acefgilopruz]|om|p[aefghklmnrtwy]|qa|r[eouw]|s[abcdeghijklmnortvyz]|t[cdfghjkmnoprtvwz]|u[agkmsyz]|v[aceginu]|w[fs]|y[etu]|z[amw]|edu|com|net|org|gov|mil|info|biz|coop|museum|aero|name|pro|mobi|arpa)$ > $$ > > but this classifies e-mail address steve@xxxxxxxxxxx as invalid (select > returns it). The same result are without dollar quoting, using your original > select. There are at least two problems: 1. Since you're storing the email address as char(60), in some cases it'll be padded with spaces up to 60 characters. This appears to be one of those cases: SELECT 'foo'::char(60) ~ '^foo$'; ?column? ---------- f (1 row) test=> SELECT 'foo'::char(60) ~ '^foo {57}$'; ?column? ---------- t (1 row) 2. Everything in the quoted string is part of the regular expression, including the embedded newlines immediately after the open quote and before the close quote. test=> SELECT 'foo'::text ~ $$ test$> ^foo$ test$> $$; ?column? ---------- f (1 row) test=> SELECT 'foo'::text ~ $_$^foo$$_$; ?column? ---------- t (1 row) Note the need to quote with something other than $$ ($_$ in this case) because of the $ that's part of the regular expression. Otherwise you'd get this: test=> SELECT 'foo'::text ~ $$^foo$$$; ERROR: syntax error at or near "$" at character 30 LINE 1: SELECT 'foo'::text ~ $$^foo$$$; ^ Suggestions: use text or varchar for the email address, don't embed newlines in the regular expression, and if you use dollar quotes and the regular expression ends with a dollar sign then quote with a character sequence other than $$. -- Michael Fuhr ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org