title: What are some ways I can improve the performance of a regular expression query in PostgreSQL 8?
body: <p>I'm performing a regular expression match on a column of type <code>character varying(256)</code> in PostgreSQL 8.3.3.  The column currently has no indices.  I'd like to improve the performance of this query if I can.</p>
  
  <p>Will adding an index help?  Are there other things I can try to help improve performance?</p>