Re: text_pattern_ops and complex regexps

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> ... Maybe we should make that
> setting PGC_POSTMASTER (or just get rid of it?), and provide was to pass
> flags to change the flavor for particular operations (this is easy for
> function-based stuff but not so easy for operators).

BTW, if you are putting it on the application to use some other syntax
to get at the old flavors, then there already is an adequate feature
built into the regex library: a pattern beginning with (?b) or (?e)
will be taken as a BRE or ERE respectively, cf. table 9-19 in current
docs. So I don't see any value in inventing something additional.
The only reason for regex_flavor to exist is to satisfy applications
that were written to expect the pre-7.4 regex syntax to work as-is.
If we think there aren't any of those anymore, let's just kill the
GUC and be done with it.

regards, tom lane