accented vowels, regexp, headache...

Hi all... As I said, I'm getting a wondrous headache trying to fix some problem in confronting strings with accented vowels. I'm talking about an Italian site that has a database-driven catalog (postgresql 6.5.3 + php 4.0.2 - upgrading is not an option). I have to made a case insensitive search confronting a field with a generic string (that is a fragment of a larger text). First attemp: for generality, I use the upper() SQL functions that's reasonably portable among DBMS: $fragment= strtoupper(function(...)); $query="Select * from table where upper(field)='$fragment'" $result=... This doesn't work when $fragment contains accented vowels, because PHP's strtoupper and PGsql's upper behave differently (it's a matter of respecting the LOCALE, I guess), and the equal test is not satisfied when it should. Second attempt: let's leave behind generality and use PGsql's advanced operators: $fragment= function(...); $query="Select * from table where field~*'$fragment'" $result=... "~*" operator (case insensitive regex match) works perfectly even with accented vowels. But... this operator assumes that the right hand member of the test is a regexp; Since "fragment" is a generic piece of text, there's good probability that it contains some characters interpreted as "special" by the regexp engine (most notably, parentheses), the test fails or it even gives an error (like "mismatched parentheses" and similar ones). Now I'm a little short of ideas... what should I do: -solve upper issues, maybe by tinkering with LOCALE, or by susbtituting "by hand" accented vowels? -track and substitute regexp's special characters in $fragment? or there's some other simpler way i'm not seeing at the moment? Any hint will be really appreciated! bye for the moment, Fabrizio /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ Fabrizio Ermini Alternate E-mail: C.so Umberto, 7 faermini@tin.it loc. Meleto Valdarno Mail on GSM: (keep it short!) 52020 Cavriglia (AR) faermini@sms.tin.it