How can I load 'utf8' into plperl by default?

I am attempting to solve a problem explained in another question here. On Debian 7.4 with Postgres 9.1.12, I am able to use the Perl qr operator just fine. On Solaris 5.11 with Postgres 9.2.4, however, I am not able to.

As detailed in the question above, the following stored procedure fails on the Solaris installation:

REATE FUNCTION foo(VARCHAR) RETURNS VARCHAR AS $
    my ( $re ) = @_;
    $re = ''.qr/\b($re)\b/i;
    return $re;
$ LANGUAGE plperl;

With the following error:

ERROR:  Unable to load utf8.pm into plperl at line 3.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted.
CONTEXT:  PL/Perl function "foo"

It is apparent that in the Debian installation of Postgres, 'utf8' is already loaded by default. I ran the following stored procedure on both systems:

CREATE FUNCTION perl_modules() RETURNS VOID AS $
    warn join(', ',sort keys %INC);
$ LANGUAGE plperl;

On the Debian system:


WARNING: Carp.pm, Carp/Heavy.pm, Exporter.pm, feature.pm, overload.pm, strict.pm, unicore/Heavy.pl, unicore/To/Fold.pl, utf8.pm, utf8_heavy.pl, vars.pm, warnings.pm, warnings/register.pm at line 2.

On the Solaris system:


WARNING: Carp.pm, Carp/Heavy.pm, Exporter.pm, feature.pm, overload.pm, overloading.pm, strict.pm, vars.pm, warnings.pm, warnings/register.pm at line 2.

I tried to load the utf8 module on the Solaris system by adding this to the postgres config file:

plperl.on_init = 'use utf8; use re;'

And that successfully loads the utf8 and re modules, as shown here:


WARNING: Carp.pm, Carp/Heavy.pm, Exporter.pm, XSLoader.pm, feature.pm, overload.pm, overloading.pm, re.pm, strict.pm, utf8.pm, vars.pm, warnings.pm, warnings/register.pm at line 2.

However the foo() stored procedure still fails:

dc=# select foo('foo');
ERROR:  Attempt to reload utf8_heavy.pl aborted.
Compilation failed in require at /opt/perl-5.18.0/lib/utf8.pm line 17.
CONTEXT:  PL/Perl function "foo"

What is the secret to successfully loading utf8, an

The solution I found involes mimicing the utf8 module's AUTOLOAD function in the plperl.on_init setting:

plperl.on_init = 'use utf8; use re; package utf8; require "utf8_heavy.pl";'

This successfully loads and initializes the utf8_heavy.pl file before dropping into Postgres's safe mode for running perl scripts.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#65268, answer score: 3