ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

change the definition of a text search dictionary

Syntax

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name (
option [ = value ] [, ... ]
)
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name OWNER TO { new_owner | CURRENT_ROLE | CURRENT_USER | SESSION_USER }
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Syntax diagrams

Read left to right. Branches are choices, bypasses are optional, loops repeat. Select an underlined parameter to open its rule.

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY · Syntax 2

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY · Syntax 3

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY · Syntax 4

Description

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY changes the definition of a text search dictionary. You can change the dictionary's template-specific options, or change the dictionary's name or owner.

You must be the owner of the dictionary to use ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY.

Parameters

name: The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search dictionary.
option: The name of a template-specific option to be set for this dictionary.
value: The new value to use for a template-specific option. If the equal sign and value are omitted, then any previous setting for the option is removed from the dictionary, allowing the default to be used.
new_name: The new name of the text search dictionary.
new_owner: The new owner of the text search dictionary.
new_schema: The new schema for the text search dictionary.

Template-specific options can appear in any order.

Examples

The following example command changes the stopword list for a Snowball-based dictionary. Other parameters remain unchanged.

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY my_dict ( StopWords = newrussian );

The following example command changes the language option to dutch, and removes the stopword option entirely.

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY my_dict ( language = dutch, StopWords );

The following example command “updates” the dictionary's definition without actually changing anything.

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY my_dict ( dummy );

(The reason this works is that the option removal code doesn't complain if there is no such option.) This trick is useful when changing configuration files for the dictionary: the ALTER will force existing database sessions to re-read the configuration files, which otherwise they would never do if they had read them earlier.

Compatibility

There is no ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY statement in the SQL standard.

Related entries

Definition snapshot: 2026-09-14T13:14:25.700916+00:00@99e6866c · English manual source