Tsearch index not set by UPDATE in PgSQL 7.3.2

[Justin Kennedy]

The short question is why does this:

select to_tsvector('default', coalesce(name, '') ||' '||
coalesce(description, '') ||' '|| coalesce(keywords,'')) from
link_items;

give different results than this:

update link_items set linksfti=to_tsvector('default', coalesce(name,
'')
||' '|| coalesce(description, '') ||' '|| coalesce(keywords,''));
select linksfti from link_items;

Here are more details:

I am working with Tsearch2 on a server with version string:
PostgreSQL 7.3.2 on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC 2.96

I have a table with the following schema:
CREATE TABLE link_items
(
link_id int4,
name varchar(255),
url varchar(255),
description text,
spanish int4,
spanishurl varchar(255),
lastmod date,
visible int4,
state varchar(25),
promisepractice int4,
keywords text,
linksfti tsvector
)
WITH OIDS;
ALTER TABLE link_items OWNER TO gate;

I want linksfti to hold the search engine's indexing data (indexed on
'name', 'description', and 'keywords'), so I run the following command:

update link_items set linksfti=to_tsvector('default', coalesce(name,
'')
||' '|| coalesce(description, '') ||' '|| coalesce(keywords,''));

The results are pretty empty. Most have empty strings for data, other
only index one or two items in the 3 input columns.

For example, after running, my table looks like:
<name>;<description>;<keywords>;<linksfti>
"American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) ";"Nationally
recognized
professional association for over 60,000 occupational therapists and
occupational therapy assistants. ";"Rehabilitation Professional
Associations and Councils";"'60':1 '000':2"
"American Physical Therapy Association (APTA)";"Represents more than
70,000 physical therapists, physical therapist assistants, and students
of
physical therapy. ";"Rehabilitation Professional Associations and
Councils";"'70':1 '000':2"
"U.S. Deaf Ski & Snowboard Association";"Winter sports for people who
are
deaf & relevant links.";"Recreation Winter Sports";"'u.s':1"
"Texas Adaptive Aquatics";"Adaptive water skiing program for people
with
physical and/or mental disabilities. ";"Recreation Water
Sports";"'and/or':1"
"World T.E.A.M. Sports";"Inclusive sports activities.";"Recreation Team
Sports";"'t.e.a.m':1"
"Tennessee";"Official State Web Site";"Legal State Agencies";""
"Project Vote Smart";"By entering zip code, users get list of all their
elected officials. Links to elected officials' and candidates' web
sites,
etc. ";"Government / Public Policy General";""
"TRIPOD Captioned Films";"Captioned Films for people who are deaf or
hard
of hearing.";"Recreation Captioned Movies";""

When don't do it as an UPDATE and just print the contents to the
screen, I
get the full expected output:

select name, description, keywords, to_tsvector('default',
coalesce(name,
'') ||' '|| coalesce(description, '') ||' '|| coalesce(keywords,''))
from
link_items;

"United States of America Deaf Track and Field";"Promotes training of
track athletes who are deaf and coaches who are deaf and hearing.
";"Recreation Track";"'of':3,11 'and':7,17,22 'are':15,20 'who':14,19
'deaf':5,16,21 'hear':23 'unit':1 'coach':18 'field':8 'state':2
'track':6,12,25 'train':10 'athlet':13 'promot':9 'america':4
'recreat':24"
"Adventure Pursuit, Inc.";"Adventure Pursuit is a group of volunteers
who
like spending time with all kinds of people and focus on adventure
sports
like kayaking.";"Recreation Water Sports";"'a':7 'is':6 'of':9,18
'on':22
'all':16 'and':20 'inc':3 'who':11 'kind':17 'like':12,25 'time':14
'with':15 'focus':21 'group':8 'kayak':26 'peopl':19 'spend':13
'sport':24,29 'water':28 'volunt':10 'pursuit':2,5 'recreat':27
'adventur':1,4,23"

Using pgAdminIII, I copied (default backup/restore) the database from
our
production server and put in on my personal desktop (Windows 2000,
PgSQL
8.0.0) and re-ran the update query and it gave proper results.

Is it a known issue with 7.3.2, and is there a workaround without
upgrading the server to 8.0.0? We will upgrade in a few months, but we
can't take the server offline now because we have too many websites
that
depend on it.