Received: from magus.postgresql.org (magus.postgresql.org [87.238.57.229]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3CB51975914 for ; Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:45:29 -0300 (ADT) Received: from oldperseverance.encs.concordia.ca ([132.205.96.94]) by magus.postgresql.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1ShQqF-0007LQ-5O for pgsql-sql@postgresql.org; Wed, 20 Jun 2012 19:45:28 +0000 Received: from cacao.encs.concordia.ca (emilu@cacao.encs.concordia.ca [132.205.47.225]) by oldperseverance.encs.concordia.ca (envelope-from emilu@encs.concordia.ca) (8.13.7/8.13.7) with ESMTP id q5KJjCg8018999; Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:45:13 -0400 Message-ID: <4FE22848.5050309@encs.concordia.ca> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:45:12 -0400 From: Emi Lu Reply-To: emilu@encs.concordia.ca User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120614 Thunderbird/13.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "ktm@rice.edu" CC: Wes James , pgsql-sql@postgresql.org Subject: Re: Simple method to format a string References: <4FE1E14A.8060603@encs.concordia.ca> <20120620182142.GF6547@aart.rice.edu> In-Reply-To: <20120620182142.GF6547@aart.rice.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.58 on oldperseverance.encs.concordia.ca at 2012/06/20 15:45:13 EDT X-Pg-Spam-Score: -4.2 (----) X-Archive-Number: 201206/62 X-Sequence-Number: 36716 > Just a small optimization would be to use a backreference with regexp_replace > instead of regexp_matches: > > select regexp_replace('foobarbaz', '(...)', E'\\1 ', 'g'); > regexp_replace > ---------------- > foo bar baz Great. After combined with several more replace(s), regexp_replace will provide me the expecting result. Thanks! Emi -- select regexp_replace( replace( replace(col-val, ' ', ''), '-', ''), .... replace... '(...)', E'\\1 ', 'g') from tn;