Regular expression. How to disable ALL meta-character in a regular expression

Hi all,

I have a web interface with offers a search field. This search field
will look for the string X in 12 different columns. If the string is
found anywhere I return the row.

The problem is that the user is eable to put spacial character like : [*
This create invalid regular expression and make my sql crash.
ICNUM~* #descriptionOrKeyword#

Is there a way to disable all meta-character. I found this in the
manual .. but haven't found example :-(:
: ....with ***=, the rest of the RE is taken to be a literal string,
with all characters
considered ordinary characters.

I know my question si basic . but I search around and haven't found so
far .. please help :-)

Thanks
/David

\Richard Huxton wrote:

> Benjamin Holmberg wrote:
>
>>
>> This is the error message I'm getting by using: ''arg_id'' instead of:
>> (CAST(arg_id
>> AS integer))
>> SELECT production_scheduled_for_date('2005-05-12', '49');
>> ERROR: invalid input syntax for integer: "arg_id"
>
>
> That's because ''arg_id'' is the string value "arg_id", those six
> characters rather than the value of any variable.
>
> --
> Richard Huxton
> Archonet Ltd
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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>