Regular Expression Matching problem...

I have a table containing regular expresion patterns for matching phone
numbers with the mobile operators.

For instance, my phone number is '+385911234567', and the regexp for
this mobile operator is: "^\+38591\d{7}$".

Now, when I do a regexp match in a single select, it behaves as
expected:

octopussy2=# select '+385911234567' ~ '^\\+38591\\d{7}$';?column?
----------t
(1 row)

Now, as I've mentioned, I have a table with operators and their patterns
for phone numbers:

octopussy2=# select * from operators;operator_id | operator_name | operator_phonenumber_pattern
-------------+---------------+------------------------------          1 | FreeSMSC      | ^\\+38590\\d{6,7}$          2
|VipNet        | ^\\+38591\\d{7}$          3 | T-Mobile      | ^\\+3859[9|8]\\d{6,7}$          4 | Tele2         |
^\\+38595\\d{7}$
(4 rows)


Now, if I construct my query like this:

octopussy2=# select '+385911234567', operator_phonenumber_pattern,
'+385911234567' ~ operator_phonenumber_pattern from operators;
  ?column?    | operator_phonenumber_pattern | ?column?
---------------+------------------------------+----------+385911234567 | ^\\+38590\\d{6,7}$           | f+385911234567
|^\\+38591\\d{7}$             | f+385911234567 | ^\\+3859[9|8]\\d{6,7}$       | f+385911234567 | ^\\+38595\\d{7}$
     | f
 
(4 rows)


Why do I get all the "f"'s? I tought that the operator_id 2 should
return "t", esp. when I wrote the first query it seems that the regex
match was ok.

Or I can't do regexp matching from the table columns?
Mike
-- 
Mario Splivalo
Mob-Art
mario.splivalo@mobart.hr

"I can do it quick, I can do it cheap, I can do it well. Pick any two."