title: Regular expressions in OData $filter conditions?
body: <p>I am considering offering an <code>OData</code> interface to my database. I need to allow regular expressions on string fields, i.e., in <code>OData $filter</code> conditions. </p>
  
  <p>OData offers <code>substringof()</code>, <code>startswith()</code>, and other functions, but I could not find anything about regular expressions in the docs. 
  Is this possible?</p>
  
  <p>Such a regex function would probably look like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/Customers?$filter=match(CompanyName, '^Al[a-z]+s Futterkiste') eq true
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>where <code>match()</code> is a function that I just made up.</p>