by the way, your example works fine unless it's a null value or empty string unfortunately, postgres isn't smart enough to know that the when p_param below is null, that the WHERE condition can be ignored select * from table where name in (Coalesce(p_param, name)) which is the same as: select * from table where name in (name) postgres does a row scan on the above sql. too slow. On Feb 19, 2008 9:34 PM, Chris <dmagick@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Postgres User wrote: > > Yes that works, but the whole point of the exercise is replace many OR > > statements with 1 regex expression. So it's not what I'm looking for. > > Why do you want it done this way? > > You can build an array of strings to check and use an in clause. > > Using php : > > $checks = array('AA', 'BA'); > > $query = "select * from table where name in ('" . implode("','", > $checks) . "')"; > > and it should use an index (up to a point anyway). > > -- > > Postgresql & php tutorials > http://www.designmagick.com/ > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster