Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 08:10:59 -0600 (MDT)
From: "scott.marlowe" <scott.marlowe@ihs.com>
To: Michael A Nachbaur <mike@nachbaur.com>
Cc: <pgsql-sql@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: RFC: i18n2ascii(TEXT) stored procedure
In-Reply-To: <200309251650.53855.mike@nachbaur.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0309260809350.21038-100000@css120.ihs.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, Michael A Nachbaur wrote:

> I've created the following stored procedure to allow me to do 
> international-insensitive text searches, e.g. a search for "Resume" would 
> match the text "Résumé".
> 
> I wanted to know:
> 
> a) am I missing any characters that need to be converted?  My first (and only 
> language) is English, so I'm in the dark when that is concerned;
> b) is there a better and/or faster way of implementing this?  I don't want 
> searches to bog down (at least too badly) as a result of this.
> 
> CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION i18n2ascii (TEXT) RETURNS TEXT AS '
>     my ($source) = @_;
>     $source =~ 
> tr/áàâäéèêëíìîïóòôöúùûüÁÀÂÄÉÈÊËÍÌÎÏÓÒÔÖÚÙÛÜ/aaaaeeeeiiiioooouuuuAAAAEEEEIIIIOOOOUUUU/;
>     return $source;
> ' LANGUAGE 'plperl';


You could probably accomplish the same thing without using perl via the 
built in function translate().  Look in the functions-string.html in the 
7.3.x documentation.

Also, the regex version of substring() is quite powerful.