Better/Different Wildcard Algorithms?

Does any one know whether better/different wildcard matching algorithms can be substituted for the the standard ones in the MATCHES and LIKE statements? We would like to use regular expressions, or other schemes as appropriate to the type of text in a field. For example, a matching algorithm that ignores white-space characters in a description field. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Philip Walden Hewlett Packard Product Generation Information Systems 1501 Page Mill Road, M/S 4U-6 Palo Alto, CA 94304 (415) 857-3899 FAX (415) 857-8234 --------------------------------------------------------------------------