Snowflake SQL - Invalid escape sequence when using Regexp_Like

Question

I have been migrating something from a.netezza based SQL script into Snowflake, and part of one of my join clauses has the following lines:

AND regexp_like(hist.Description, p.RegexPattern, 'i')

This runs fine on Netezza, however when running within Snowflake I get the following error after about 2 minutes of run time:

100048 (2201B): Invalid regular expression: '^Renewal\b.*\bDraft\b.*\bPending\b\h+\bNon-Renewal\b.*', invalid escape sequence: \h

Has anyone ever encountered this error? A bit new to regexp_like function so it may be something simple, but haven't been able to find anything regarding a fix online. Not sure what the error is really telling me?

Answer 1

\h is a Perl 5 escape sequence to match horizontal whitespace per Perl Regular Expression Classes . Snowflake regular expressions don't appear to support \h. The closest alternative would be to use \s. Note that \s will match a few characters that \h will not, so you may want to verify whether you have any of those characters before making the substitution. See the Perl reference for details.