SNOW-683625: Standardize RLIKE (REGEXP/RLIKE in Snowflake) and add CONTAINS method to Column

[ChuliangXiao]

This is more of Snowflake syntax issue.

What is the current behavior?

To match any string containing ABC, .rlike('.*ABC.*')
Also Snowflake CONTAINS is not available for Snowpark Column yet.

What is the desired behavior?

To match any string containing ABC, .rlike('ABC')

How would this improve snowflake-snowpark-python?

Make RLIKE consistent with other SQL, i.e. pySpark and MySQL

References, Other Background

According to Snowflake Docs on REGEXP,

The function implicitly anchors a pattern at both ends (i.e. '' automatically becomes '^$', and 'ABC' automatically becomes '^ABC$'). To match any string starting with ABC, the pattern would be 'ABC.*'.

[sfc-gh-jdu]

Hi @ChuliangXiao, REGEXP in Snowflake has been there for a while and our Python API should align with Snowflake SQL, so we might not want to change it. But we can add contains to Column class, which will satisfy your need described in this issue, right? For now, you can use contains function first as a workaround.

[ChuliangXiao]

Hi @ChuliangXiao, REGEXP in Snowflake has been there for a while and our Python API should align with Snowflake SQL, so we might not want to change it. But we can add contains to Column class, which will satisfy your need described in this issue, right? For now, you can use contains function first as a workaround.

Thanks for suggesting the contains function. Would be great to have contains in the Column class.