Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> writes: > On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Greg Stark <st...@mit.edu> wrote: >> But the whole problem is that not all the strings with the initial >> substring are in a contiguous block.
> If that were true for the sorts of indexes we're using for LIKE > queries, the existing approach wouldn't work either. Right. Since it's not a problem for the sorts of indexes with which we can use LIKE, moving knowledge of LIKE into the btree machinery doesn't buy us a darn thing, except more complexity in a place where we can ill afford it. The essential problem here is "when can you stop scanning, given a pattern with this prefix?", and btree doesn't know any more about that than make_greater_string does; it would in fact have to use make_greater_string or something isomorphic to it. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers