Re: tsearch2 dictionary for statute cites

"Kevin Grittner" <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov> writes:
> People are likely to search for statute cites, which tend to have a
> hierarchical form. I'm not sure the prefix approach will work for
> this. For example, there is a section 939.64 in the state statutes
> dealing with commission of a crime while wearing a bulletproof
> garment. If someone searches for that, they should find subsections
> like 939.64(1) or 939.64(2) but not different sections which start
> with the same characters like 939.641 (the section on concealing
> identity) or 939.645 (the section on hate crimes). A search for
> chapter 939 should return any of the above.

I think what you need is a custom parser that treats these similarly to
hyphenated words. If I pretend that the dot is a hyphen I get matching
behavior that seems to meet all those requirements.

Unfortunately we don't seem to have any really easy way to plug in a
custom parser, other than copy-paste-modify the existing one which would
be a PITA from a maintenance standpoint. Perhaps you could pass the
texts and the queries through a regexp substitution that converts
digit-dot-digit to digit-dash-digit?

regards, tom lane