On 2 May 2016, at 6:07pm, Eric Kestler <ekestler at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking for a release of SQLite that included extended text > functionality; specifically, the SQL Server charindex function. Won't happen. Sorry. > Is there any reason not to include more text functions into the core SQLite > release? I'm going to answer the general case of "Why don't you keep adding functions to SQLite to improve it ? The more it can do the better !". There are literally billions of installations of SQLite. Almost none of them are on desktop computers. Most of them are on devices with little memory, like mobile phones, digital TV recorders, routers, embedded machine controllers, and SatNav units. For all these things, keeping the source code for SQLite small means a smaller physical package and lower power usage, both of which delight manufacturers. So SQLite provides a lot of capabilities as plugins: functions, encryption, user authentication, file system interface, probably others that don't come to mind right now. That way a manufacturer can include just the functions it needs. Including any functionality in the standard installation of SQLite is expensive, and for most installations it's needlessly expensive. > For the record, I'm not a C programmer, and have no idea how to go about > compiling and linking external function However, the function you want is relatively easy to write in any language, as long as you understand what 'character' means with respect to your strings. But there's good news. Some SQLite shims allow you to write external functions in the language they're the shim for. For example, a Python library which allows you to make SQLite calls from Python allows you to write external functions in Python; a PHP library which allows you to make SQLite calls from PHP allows you to write external functions in PHP. So tell us what language you're writing in and what SQLite library you're using and we might be able to give you good news. Or read the documentation yourself. Simon.
