Wildcard searching between words with CRC mode in Sphinx - sphinx

I use sphinx with CRC mode and min_infix_length = 1 and I want to use wildcard searching between character of a keyword. Assume I have some data like these in my index files:
name
-------
mickel
mick
mickol
mickil
micknil
nickol
nickal
and when I search for all record that their's name start with 'mick' and end with 'l':
select * from all where match ('mick*l')
I expect the results should be like this:
name
-------
mickel
mickol
mickil
micknil
but nothing returned. How can I do that?
I know that I can do this in dict=keywords mode but I should use crc mode for some reasons.
I also used '^' and '$' operators and didn't work.

You can't use 'middle' wildcards with CRC. One of the reaons for dict=keywords, the wildcards it can support are much more flexible.
With CRC, it 'precomputes' all the wildcard combinations, and injects them as seperate keywords in index, eg for
eg mickel as a document word, and with min_prefix_len=1, indexer willl create the words:
mickel
mickel*
micke*
mick*
mic*
mi*
m*
... as words in index, so all the combinations can match. If using min_infix_len, it also has to do all the combinations at the start as well (so (word_length)^2 + 1 combinations)
... if it had to precompute all the combinations for wildcards in the middle, would be a lot more again. Particularly if then allows all for middle AND start/end combinations as well)
Although having said that, you can rewrite
select * from all where match ('mick*l')
as
select * from all where match ('mick* *l')
because with min_infix_len, the start and end will be indexed as sperate words. Jus need to insist that both match. (although can't think how to make them bot match the same word!)

Related

Prefix/wildcard searches with 'websearch_to_tsquery' in PostgreSQL Full Text Search?

I'm currently using the websearch_to_tsquery function for full text search in PostgreSQL. It all works well except for the fact that I no longer seem to be able to do partial matches.
SELECT ts_headline('english', q.\"Content\", websearch_to_tsquery('english', {request.Text}), 'MaxFragments=3,MaxWords=25,MinWords=2') Highlight, *
FROM (
SELECT ts_rank_cd(f.\"SearchVector\", websearch_to_tsquery('english', {request.Text})) AS Rank, *
FROM public.\"FileExtracts\" f, websearch_to_tsquery('english', {request.Text}) as tsq
WHERE f.\"SearchVector\" ## tsq
ORDER BY rank DESC
) q
Searches for customer work but cust* and cust:* do not.
I've had a look through the documentation and a number of articles but I can't find a lot of info on it. I haven't worked with it before so hopefully it's just something simple that I'm doing wrong?
You can't do this with websearch_to_tsquery but you can do it with to_tsquery (because ts_query allows to add a :* wildcard) and add the websearch syntax yourself in in your backend.
For example in a node.js environment you could do smth. like this:
let trimmedSearch = req.query.search.trim()
let searchArray = trimmedSearch.split(/\s+/) //split on every whitespace and remove whitespace
let searchWithStar = searchArray.join(' & ' ) + ':*' //join word back together adds AND sign in between an star on last word
let escapedSearch = yourEscapeFunction(searchWithStar)
and than use it in your SQL
search_column ## to_tsquery('english', ${escapedSearch})
You need to write the tsquery directly if you want to use partial matching. plainto_tsquery doesn't pass through partial match notation either, so what were you doing before you switched to websearch_to_tsquery?
Anything that applies a stemmer is going to have hard time handling partial match. What is it supposed to do, take off the notation, stem the part, then add it back on again? Not do stemming on the whole string? Not do stemming on just the token containing the partial match indicator? And how would it even know partial match was intended, rather than just being another piece of punctuation?
To add something on top of the other good answers here, you can also compose your query with both websearch_to_tsquery and to_tsquery to have everything from both worlds:
select * from your_table where ts_vector_col ## to_tsquery('simple', websearch_to_tsquery('simple', 'partial query')::text || ':*')
Another solution I have come up with is to do the text transform as part of the query so building the tsquery looks like this
to_tsquery(concat(regexp_replace(trim(' all the search terms here '), '\W+', ':* & '), ':*'));
(trim) Removes leading/trailing whitespace
(regexp_replace) Splits the search string on non word chars and adds trailing wildcards to each term, then ANDs the terms (:* & )
(concat) Adds a trailing wildcard to the final term
(to_tsquery) Converts to a ts_query
You can test the string manipulation by running
SELECT concat(regexp_replace(trim(' all the search terms here '), '\W+', ':* & ', 'gm'), ':*')
the result should be
all:* & the:* & search:* & terms:* & here:*
So you have multi word partial matches e.g. searching spi ma would return results matching spider man

Can I write a PCRE conditional that only needs the no-match part?

I am trying to create a regular expression to determine if a string contains a number for an SQL statement. If the value is numeric, then I want to add 1 to it. If the number is not numeric, I want to return a 1. More or less. Here is the SQL:
SELECT
field,
CASE
WHEN regexp_like(field, '^ *\d*\.?\d* *$') THEN dec(field) + 1
ELSE 1
END nextnumber
FROM mytable
This actually works, and returns something like this:
INVALID 1
00000 1
00001E 1
00379 380
00013 14
99904 99905
But to push the envelope of understanding, what if I wanted to cover negative numbers, or those with a positive sign. The sign would have to immediately precede or follow the number, but not both, and I would not want to allow white space between the sign and the number.
I came up with a conditional expression with a capture group to capture the sign on the front of the number to determine if a sign was allowed on the end, but it seems a little awkward to handle given I don't really need a yes-pattern.
Here is the modified regex: ^ ([+-]?)*\d*\.?\d*(?(1) *|[+-]? *)$
This works at regex101.com, but in order for it to work I need to have something before the pipe, so I have to duplicate the next pattern in both the yes-pattern and the no-pattern.
All that background for this question: How can I avoid that duplication?
EDIT: DB2 for i uses International Components for Unicode to provide regular expression processing. It turns out that this library does not support conditionals like PRCE, so I changed the tags on this question. The answer given by Wiktor Stribiżew provides a working alternative to the conditional by using a negative lookahead.
You do not have to duplicate the end pattern, just move it outside the conditional:
^ *([+-])?\d*\.?\d*(?(1)|[+-]?) *$
See the regex demo. So, the yes-part is empty, and the no-part has an optional pattern.
You may also solve it with a mere negative lookahead:
^ *([+-](?!.*[-+]))?\d*\.?\d*[+-]? *$
See another regex demo. Here, ([+-](?!.*[-+]))? matches (optionally) a + or - that are not followed with any 0+ char followed with another + or -.

In DB2 SQL RegEx, how can a conditional replacement be done without CASE WHEN END..?

I have a DB2 v7r3 SQL SELECT statement with three instances of REGEXP_SUBSTR(), all with the same regex pattern string, each of which extract one of three groups.
I'd like to change the first SUBSTR to REGEXP_REPLACE() to do a conditional replacement if there's no match, to insert a default value similarly to the ELSE section of a CASE...END. But I can't make it work. I could easily use a CASE, but it seems more compact & efficient to use RegEx.
For example, I have descriptions of food containers sizes, in various states of completeness:
12X125
6X350
1X1500
1500ML
1000
The last two don't have the 'nnX' part at the beginning, in which case '1X' is assumed and needs to be inserted.
This is my current working pattern string:
^(?:(\d{1,3})(?:X))?((?:\d{1,4})(?:\.\d{1,3})?)(L|ML|PK|Z|)$
The groups returned are: quantity, size, and unit.
But only the first group needs the conditional replacement:
(?:(\d{1,3})(?:X))?
This RexEgg webpage describes the (?=...) operator, and it seems to be what I need, but I'm not sure. It's in the list of operators for my version of DB2, but I can't make it work. Frankly, it's a bit deeper than my regex knowledge, and I can't even make it work in my favorite online regex tester, Regex101.
So...does anyone have any idea or suggestions..? Thanks.
Try this (replace "digits not followed by X_or_digit"):
with t(s) as (values
'12X125'
, '6X350'
, '1X1500'
, '1500'
, '1125'
)
select regexp_replace(s, '^([\d]+(?![X\d]))', '1X\1')
from t;

wildcard inside string behaves strangely

I've just started to learn PS. Can somebody explain me below example (the reason for it if possible):
Get-Command s*rvice
gives hits like Set-Service, Start-Service, etc. but not commands like New-Service, Restart-Service, etc.
You're imagining that the * represents a single character, but it can match any number of characters. s[e]rvice and s[eeeeee]rvice and s[tart-se]rvice
You're reading that s*rvice will match exactly the text you type, and vary only where the wildcard is. But you're expecting it to match New-Service as if it has wildcards at the start and end like *s*rvice* - but it doesn't, it will only match the pattern you typed; the start must start with s and the end must finish with e.

list trigger no system ending with "_BI"

I want to list the trigger no system ending with "_BI" in firebird database,
but no result with this
select * from rdb$triggers
where
rdb$trigger_source is not null
and (coalesce(rdb$system_flag,0) = 0)
and (rdb$trigger_source not starting with 'CHECK' )
and (rdb$trigger_name like '%BI')
but with this syntaxs it gives me a "_bi" and "_BI0U" and "_BI0U" ending result
and (rdb$trigger_name like '%BI%')
but with this syntaxs it gives me null result
and (rdb$trigger_name like '%#_BI')
thank you beforehand
The problem is that the Firebird system tables use CHAR(31) for object names, this means that they are padded with spaces up to the declared length. As a result, use of like '%BI') will not yield results, unless BI are the 30th and 31st character.
There are several solutions
For example you can trim the name before checking
trim(rdb$trigger_name) like '%BI'
or you can require that the name is followed by at least one space
rdb$trigger_name || ' ' like '%BI %'
On a related note, if you want to check if your trigger name ends in _BI, then you should also include the underscore in your condition. And as an underscore in like is a single character matcher, you need to escape it:
trim(rdb$trigger_name) like '%\_BI' escape '\'
Alternatively you could also try to use a regular expressions, as you won't need to trim or otherwise mangle the lefthand side of the expression:
rdb$trigger_name similar to '%\_BI[[:SPACE:]]*' escape '\'