Question

Is there any way (a function, a config option, etc.) to force informix to ignore accents on searches?

Example:

select id, name from user where name like 'conceição%'

Returns:

1    |    conceicao oliveira
2    |    conceiçao santos
3    |    conceicão andrade
4    |    conceição barros

Thanks

Answer 1

Not directly, that I’m aware of. You could install the Regex DataBlade module. The use it’s regexp_match function. Replacing the query with something like this:

where regexp_match(name , 'concei[çc][ãa][o]%')

Or, if you don’t have that option, what I would do would be add another ‘normalized_name’ column. replacing all the accented characters with a “standard” character. Then query my table based on that.

name=’conceiçao santos’, normalized_name=’conceicao santos’

Adding a normalized column will also make sure you’re not dependant on any module, or any particular database for that matter.