Boyer-Moore string searching in LIKE, ILIKE, and/or POSITION?

Martin L. Buchanan <martinlbuchanan@gmail.com>

From: "Martin L. Buchanan" <martinlbuchanan@gmail.com>
To: pgsql-general list <pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2023-02-09T00:04:20Z
Lists: pgsql-general
In the PostgreSQL Todo wiki, Boyer-Moore string searching for LIKE is
mentioned as an outstanding item.

For the common and simple cases of find this string anywhere in another
string:

str LIKE '%foo%'

str ILIKE  '%foo%'

position('foo' in str) > 0

Is Boyer-Moore string searching now used by any of these three?

I checked the PG documentation and found no info about this other than what
was in the Todo wiki, https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Todo, under
Functions. Tom Lane gave a thumbs down to the idea back in 2008, but that
was a long time ago:
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/27645.1220635769@sss.pgh.pa.us .

Sincerely,

Martin L Buchanan
senior software engineer
Laramie, WY, USA