Improve usability of regexp and other functions

Is your feature request related to a problem or challenge? Please describe what you are trying to do.

In functions like regexp_count we have definition like this:

def regexp_count(
    string: Expr, pattern: Expr, start: Expr | None = None, flags: Expr | None = None
) -> Expr:

It is a common pattern that the pattern is a string, the start is an integer, and flags is a string (or single character).

It would be more pythonic if we can just pass those values without wrapping them in a lit() call.

Describe the solution you'd like

Review the regexp functions in the function library and find other common patterns.

For each allow users to not have to specify a Expr. We do this in other places in the code, so a pattern is already established.

I came here to post about this as well. I think a good check on this is the ability to remove lit from all (or nearly all) doctest examples.
Hit this recently around a bunch of string functions. strpos, array_to_string etc

@timsaucer

Hi @timsaucer @ntjohnson1 , I took a stab at this over in #1493 , if you think it is in the right direction, I can expand that to other functions. The current change is only on the python side since there is no "real" problem in the rust side as far as I see .
Anyway, let me know what you guys think. Thanks!

Navigation Menu

Repository navigation

Improve usability of regexp and other functions #1446

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Improve usability of regexp and other functions #1446

Description

Activity

ntjohnson1 commented on Apr 8, 2026

renato2099 commented on Apr 13, 2026

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions