parameterized LIKE does not use index

Hi,

Consider the where-clauses:

WHERE lower(col) LIKE 'abc';
WHERE lower(col) LIKE 'abc%';

these will both use a b-tree functional index in lower(col) if one exists.
The clause

WHERE lower(col) LIKE '%abc';

can't use the index as you would expect, because of the wildcard at the
front (as mentioned in the manual). Thus, it has to do a seqscan, on what
in my case is a very large table. But still that's not too bad, because I
expect an overwhelming amount of the simple cases, and only very few that
start with a percentage sign. Now, what's problematic is if i replace the
literal with a parameter, like this:

WHERE lower(col) LIKE ?

It seems that the parameterized query gets compiled once, and because the
parameter is not yet known, one cannot be sure it doesn't start with a
percentage sign. Using the parameterized version causes ALL cases to use
a seqscan.

Of course, I could modify the application and send different SQL depending
on which case we're in or just constructing a query with a literal each
time, but is there a way to add a hint to the SQL that would cause the
query to be re-planned if it's a case that could use the index? Or can I
convince the (Perl) driver to do so?

kurt.