Question

In the context of a postgres query, this –

lower(regexp_replace('If...', '[^\w\s]', ''))

gives me this –

'if..' (quotes mine)

As you can see, only one of the three periods gets trimmed. Can someone tell me what I must add to my regexp to get rid of the other two or any other special characters that might be trailing in this way?

Answer 1

You are probably looking for the fourth, optional parameter of regexp_replace():

SELECT regexp_replace('If...', '[^\w\s]', '', 'g');

g .. for "globally", i.e. replace every match in the string, not just the first.