Wildcard queries via PHP4

Hi,

I am trying to find the syntax to pass a wildcard query through to postgres.
Basically I just want to use the user input as a substring of the actual
query to postgres.
It can even be simpler, I realy only need the wildcard at end of the input
string

i.e. user inputs Smith in form, I want to pick up Smith & Smithsonian.

Right now I have:

if ( strlen($NAME) >0):
$NAME = addslashes($NAME);
$NAME = strtolower($NAME); /
$NAME = ucfirst($NAME); //translation final to Upper 1st letter
rest lower as per db format.

$conn = pg_Connect("dbname=damn_db port=5432");
if(!$conn) { echo "Error in connecting to DB\n"; exit; }
$result = pg_Exec($conn, "SELECT * FROM table2 WHERE surname =
'$NAME' ");
For whatever reason the *~ matching does not work in PHP4 (ie surname *~ )
(or more precisely I can't get it to work)

Any suggestions?

Many thanks.

_______________________________
Rick Frank
Dufferin Research

mailto:rickf(at)dufferinresearch(dot)com
________________________________