Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> SQL has the following escape syntax for it:
> U&'special character: \xxxx' [ UESCAPE '\' ]
Man that's ugly. Why the ampersand? How do you propose to distinguish
this from a perfectly legitimate use of the & operator?
> 2. Convert this syntax to a function call. But that would then create a
> lot of inconsistencies, such as needing functional indexes for matches
> against what should really be a literal.
Uh, why do you think that? The function could surely be stable, even
immutable if you grant that a database's encoding can't change.
regards, tom lane