Commit ffea8fd3 authored by Tom Lane's avatar Tom Lane

Update citext's documentation to match the recently-applied patch,

per David Wheeler.
parent bf0b6ac4
<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/citext.sgml,v 1.1 2008/07/29 18:31:20 tgl Exp $ -->
<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/citext.sgml,v 1.2 2008/09/12 18:29:49 tgl Exp $ -->
<sect1 id="citext">
<title>citext</title>
......@@ -96,31 +96,23 @@
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Limitations</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<title>String Comparison Behavior</title>
<para>
<type>citext</>'s behavior depends on
the <literal>LC_CTYPE</> setting of your database. How it compares
values is therefore determined when
<application>initdb</> is run to create the cluster. It is not truly
case-insensitive in the terms defined by the Unicode standard.
Effectively, what this means is that, as long as you're happy with your
collation, you should be happy with <type>citext</>'s comparisons. But
if you have data in different languages stored in your database, users
of one language may find their query results are not as expected if the
collation is for another language.
In order to emulate a case-insensitive collation as closely as possible,
there are <type>citext</>-specific versions of a number of the comparison
operators and functions. So, for example, the regular expression
operators <literal>~</> and <literal>~*</> exhibit the same behavior when
applied to <type>citext</>: they both compare case-insensitively.
The same is true
for <literal>!~</> and <literal>!~*</>, as well as for the
<literal>LIKE</> operators <literal>~~</> and <literal>~~*</>, and
<literal>!~~</> and <literal>!~~*</>. If you'd like to match
case-sensitively, you can always cast to <type>text</> before comparing.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The pattern-matching comparison operators, such as <literal>LIKE</>,
<literal>~</>, <literal>~~</>, <literal>!~</>, <literal>!~~</>, etc.,
have been overloaded to make case-insensitive comparisons when their
left-hand argument is of type <type>citext</>. However, related
functions have not been changed, including:
Similarly, all of the following functions perform matching
case-insensitively if their arguments are <type>citext</>:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
......@@ -162,9 +154,30 @@
</itemizedlist>
<para>
Of course, for the regular expression functions, you can specify
case-insensitive comparisons in their <parameter>flags</> arguments, but
the same cannot be done for the the non-regexp functions.
For the regexp functions, if you want to match case-sensitively, you can
specify the <quote>c</> flag to force a case-sensitive match. Otherwise,
you must cast to <type>text</> before using one of these functions if
you want case-sensitive behavior.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Limitations</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
<type>citext</>'s behavior depends on
the <literal>LC_CTYPE</> setting of your database. How it compares
values is therefore determined when
<application>initdb</> is run to create the cluster. It is not truly
case-insensitive in the terms defined by the Unicode standard.
Effectively, what this means is that, as long as you're happy with your
collation, you should be happy with <type>citext</>'s comparisons. But
if you have data in different languages stored in your database, users
of one language may find their query results are not as expected if the
collation is for another language.
</para>
</listitem>
......@@ -178,17 +191,6 @@
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<productname>PostgreSQL</> supports casting between <type>text</>
and any other type (even non-string types) by using the other type's
I/O functions. This doesn't work with <type>citext</>. However,
you can cast via I/O functions in two steps, for example
<literal><replaceable>somevalue</>::text::citext</literal> or
<literal><replaceable>citextvalue</>::text::<replaceable>sometype</></literal>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<type>citext</> doesn't help much if you need data to compare
......
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