Another way to match multiple occurrences is to use curly brackets with a number, like: select 'ab' ~ '^[a-z]{2}$';
It can be done with a range of numbers as well: select 'ab' ~ '^[a-z]{2,4}$'; select 'abab' ~ '^[a-z]{2,4}$'; I believe, however, that the curly brackets notation was introduced in 9.0 and is not available in earlier versions. --Stephen On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:21 AM, Samuel Gendler <sgend...@ideasculptor.com>wrote: > I'd think you need to indicate multiple alphabetic matches. Your first > regex actually matches only b followed by end of string and the second is > really only matching start of string followed by a. The third is looking > for a single character string. > > Try this: select 'ab' ~ '^[a-z]+$' > or this: select 'ab' ~ '^[a-z]*$' > > or if looking only for 2 character strings: select 'ab' ~ '^[a-z][a-z]$' > > > On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 3:41 PM, andrew1 <andr...@mytrashmail.com> wrote: > >> hi all, >> >> these return t: >> select 'ab' ~ '[a-z]$' >> select 'ab' ~ '^[a-z]' >> >> select 'ab' ~ '^[a-z]$' returns f >> >> Can't I use ^ and $ at the same time to match, in this case? >> thanks. >> >> -- >> Sent via pgsql-sql mailing list (pgsql-sql@postgresql.org) >> To make changes to your subscription: >> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-sql >> > >