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up vote 0 down vote favorite

I'm wondering what the heck is wrong with this?

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION maxNumber(int4)
RETURNS int4 AS $$
DECLARE
  v_year ALIAS FOR $1; 
BEGIN
  RETURN (
    SELECT count(*)
    FROM table
    WHERE stringcol ~ '[0-9]{2,3}.[0-9]{1,3}.v_year.[0-9]{1,3}'
  );
END;
$$ LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE;

It always returns 0. The SQL itself seems to work. Thanks.

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1  
You should escape . as \\. –  vks 17 hours ago

2 Answers 2

up vote 0 down vote

Shouldn't that be more like:

(E'[0-9]{2,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.' || v_year || E'\\.[0-9]{1,3}')

... as in, you're using a literal v_year as is, rather than concatenating its value with the two other sides of the expression.

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up vote 0 down vote 
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION maxNumber(int4)
RETURNS int4 AS $$
DECLARE
BEGIN
    RETURN (SELECT 
    coalesce(
      MAX(
        CAST(
          substring(stringcol, '[0-9]{1,3}$')
        AS int)
      )
    , 0)
    FROM table 
    WHERE stringcol ~ (E'\\' || '.' || to_char($1, 'FM09') || E'\\' || '.[0-9]{1,3}$'));
END;
$$ LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE;
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