Thread: wild cards in pg_hba.conf

Hi all

I have a user I allow to create databases. At the moment he just “echo NewDBName >>pgdbnames.txt” and there is  a @HisDBFiles type entry against his name in pg_hba.conf under the database column. Problem with this reigiem is I have to reload the database for him each time for it to take effect (on debian I just /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.0 reload).

What Im hoping is I can just have a wild card entry instead of @... under the database column say, like 

host   cheshire%  cheshire    127.0.0.1/32      password

(where Cheshire is his username).

This way any db name that starts which Cheshire will use password from localhost for user Cheshire

Is something like this possible?

Alternatively, though less cool, is there a way he can provoke a 'reload' of the pg_hba.conf file with out having too much authority ?

Thanks

glenn