Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:
> On Tue, 25 Feb 2003, Justin Clift wrote:
>> As an alternative to _removing_ it, would a feasible idea be to
>> transparently alias it to something else, say a specific type of regex
>> query or something?
> Why screw with it for the sake of screwing with it?
AFAICT, Peter isn't interested in changing the implementation, but in
removing it outright (to reduce our nonstandardness, or something like
that). While we've removed marginal features in the past, I think this
one is sufficiently popular that there's no chance of removing it just
on the strength of the argument that it's not standard.
The efficiency argument seemed irrelevant --- AFAICT, ILIKE is exactly
as indexable as any equivalent regex substitute, which is to say
"only if the pattern's leading characters are fixed (nonalphabetic)".
regards, tom lane