Question

Why does the space make all the difference?

select * from beds where id~'.*Extra large.* (Red).*';

and

select * from beds where id~'.*Extra large.*(Red).*';

The first one returned nothing and the second acted as I wanted. An example of what I want matched is:

"Extra large" (Red) {2012 model}

I thought the first would work since there is a space after (Red)?

EDIT:Even if I escape the brackets with ‘\’ I still can’t have a space there.

Answer 1

The problem is that you have not escaped your brackets around "Red". Your regex should be:

'.*Extra large.* \(Red\).*'

This makes the brackets literal brackets, but without escaping them they create a regex group (and not characters to be matched).

Your first regex grouped the characters Red and required a space to precede that group Red, so it would match "... Red...", but there is a bracket in your input before Red, so it doesn’t match.

Your second regex accepts any character(s) (via .*) before Red, so it matches.