We can do this without creating an API break for estimation functions
by passing the collation using the existing fmgr functionality for
passing an input collation as a hidden parameter.
The need for this was foreseen at the outset, but we didn't get around to
making it happen in 9.1 because of the decision to sort all pg_statistic
histograms according to the database's default collation. That meant that
selectivity estimators generally need to use the default collation too,
even if they're estimating for an operator that will do something
different. The reason it's suddenly become more interesting is that
regexp interpretation also uses a collation (for its LC_TYPE not LC_COLLATE
property), and we no longer want to use the wrong collation when examining
regexps during planning. It's not that the selectivity estimate is likely
to change much from this; rather that we are thinking of caching compiled
regexps during planner estimation, and we won't get the intended benefit
if we cache them with a different collation than the executor will use.
Back-patch to 9.1, both because the regexp change is likely to get
back-patched and because we might as well get this right in all
collation-supporting branches, in case any third-party code wants to
rely on getting the collation. The patch turns out to be minuscule
now that I've done it ...