Horton

Re: add function argument names to regex* functions.

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

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From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
To: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Cc: jian he <jian.universality@gmail.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>, Dian Fay <di@nmfay.com>, Jim Nasby <jim.nasby@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2024-05-15T20:18:53Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 4:13 PM David G. Johnston
<david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You just broke my brain when you say that you read:
>
> By default, only the first match of the pattern is replaced.  If replace_at is specified and greater than zero, then the first "replace_at - 1" matches are skipped before making a single replacement (i.e., the g flag is ignored when replace_at is specified.)
>
> And then say:
>
> I'd expect replace_at to be a character position or something, not an occurrence count.

Ah. What I meant was: if I just saw the parameter name, and not the
documentation, I believe that I would not correctly understand what it
did. I would have had to read the docs. Whereas I'm pretty sure at
some point years ago, I looked up these functions and I saw "N", and I
did understand what that did without needing it explained. If I had
seen "count" or "occurrence" I think I would have understood that
without further explanation, too.

So my point was: to me, N is more self-documenting than replace_at,
and less self-documenting than count or occurrence.

If your mileage varies on that point, so be it!

-- 
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com

Commits

  1. Doc: fix text's description of regexp_replace's arguments.

  2. Add argument names to the regexp_XXX functions.

  3. Add assorted new regexp_xxx SQL functions.