From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
cc: rmzgrimes@gmail.com, pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Unnecessary use of .* in examples
In-reply-to: <259a5d19b504d7cb9bb2f76ea384a045bcc525dc.camel@cybertec.at>
References: <161215841824.14653.8969016349304314299@wrigleys.postgresql.org>
 <259a5d19b504d7cb9bb2f76ea384a045bcc525dc.camel@cybertec.at>
Comments: In-reply-to Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
	message dated "Mon, 01 Feb 2021 09:53:06 +0100"
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Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2021 10:08:52 -0500
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Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at> writes:
> On Mon, 2021-02-01 at 05:46 +0000, PG Doc comments form wrote:
>> In the table for the ~ (and friends) operator, every example has a poin=
tless
>> set of '.*' surrounding the text to be matched. These unnecessary opera=
tors
>> add visual clutter making the examples both harder to read and understa=
nd,
>> and since they're official examples, they teach bad habits.

> I agree that that is comewhat confusing for people who understand
> regular expressions.  On the other hand, the example should show some
> special characters, so that people who don't know regular expressions
> understand that this is more than substring matching.

> Perhaps 'thomas' ~ '^thom' and so on?

There are examples just a bit further down that include special
characters.  I agree with the OP that the useless ".*"s add nothing
except confusion as to the semantics; but I don't think we need these
very first examples to use a lot of bells and whistles.

Maybe what would be better is to have an example with embedded .*
such as 'thomas' ~ 't.*m'.

			regards, tom lane