Osvaldo Kussama wrote:
2010/6/25 Frank Bax <f...@sympatico.ca>:
I'm not quite sure how to ask for the query I want, so let's start with
data:

create table t1 (i int, val varchar);
insert into t1 values(1,'A B C D');
insert into t1 values(2,'B D E F');
insert into t1 values(3,'G H I J');
create table t2 (q varchar, z varchar);
insert into t2 values('A','vowel');
insert into t2 values('B','consonant');
insert into t2 values('E','vowel');
insert into t2 values('K','consonant');

t1.val will contain "words" separated by blanks.  It might be better if each
"word" were a separate row in another table; but that's not how the legacy
database was built.  I understand this can be simulated by:

select i,a[s] from (select i, generate_subscripts(string_to_array(val,'
'),1) as s, string_to_array(val,' ') as a from t1) foo;

In my "real life" situation, the "words" are not single letters.

I'd like to write a function that removes selected "words" from t1.val based
on select on t2.
In the above example; let's exclude all vowels, so I end up with:
1 'B C D'
2 'B D F'
3 'G H I J'

For some "words" in val; there may not be a row when joining to t2.q; these
words must be included in final result.  In the above example; there is no
row in t2 where q="I"; so it is included in result.

How do I write such a function?  Can it be done with SQL only?



Try:

SELECT i, array_to_string(array_agg(foo), ' ') "Val"
FROM (SELECT * FROM (SELECT i, regexp_split_to_table(val, E'\\s+') AS
foo FROM t1) bar
LEFT OUTER JOIN t2 ON (bar.foo = t2.q) WHERE z IS DISTINCT FROM 'vowel') foobar
GROUP BY i;
 i |   Val
---+---------
 1 | B C D
 3 | G H I J
 2 | B D F
(3 linhas)

Osvaldo




Excellent! Thanks! I've never seen "is distinct from" before. Looks like that was the missing piece to my puzzle.

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