On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 19:56:33 -0800, Jeff Davis wrote:
> Try using the "~" regex matching operator instead of ILIKE.
>
> Regards,
> Jeff Davis
>

I still need the ILIKE to compare the returned value with $telephone.

I have the following PHP to check an input string for non numeric characters:

$tel = ereg_replace('[^[:digit:]]', "", $test);   --  $tel then equals only the numbers in test.

This is what I want to be able to do inside the query, but without altering the values in the database - to look at the column 'phone', see if there are any non-numeric characters and ignore them then compare the numbers that are left with $telephone.

I tried "AND phone ~ '[^[:digit:]]' ILIKE $telephone"

But get the following error:

Warning:pg_query(): Query failed: Error: operator does not exist: boolean ~~* "unknown" HINT: No operator matches the given name and argument type(s). You may need to add explicit type casts.

cheers,

Fiona