postgres join list with $ delimiter - string

Question

From these tables:
select group, ids
from some.groups_and_ids;
Result:
group | group_ids
---+----
winners | 1$4
losers | 4
others | 2$3$4
and:
select id,name from some.ids_and_names;
id | name
---+----
1 | bob
2 | robert
3 | dingus
4 | norbert
How would you go about returning something like:
winners | bob, norbert
losers | norbert
others | robert, dingus, norbert

Answer 1

with normalized (group_name, id) as (
select group_name, unnest(string_to_array(group_ids,'$')::int[])
from groups_and_ids
)
select n.group_name, string_agg(p.name,',' order by p.name)
from normalized n
join ids_and_names p on p.id = n.id
group by n.group_name;
The first part (the common table expression) normalizes your broken table design by creating a proper view on the groups_and_ids table. The actual query then joins the ids_and_names table to the normalized version of your groups and the aggregates the names again.
Note I renamed group to group_name because group is a reserved keyword.
SQLFiddle: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!15/2205b/2

Answer 2

Is it possible to redesign your database? Putting all the group_ids into one column makes life hard. If your table was e.g.
group | group_id
winners | 1
winners | 4
losers | 4
etc. this would be trivially easy. As it is, the below query would do it, although I hesitated to post it, since it encourages bad database design (IMHO)!
p.s. I took the liberty of renaming some columns, because they are reserved words. You can escape them, but why make life difficult for yourself?
select group_name,array_to_string(array_agg(username),', ') -- array aggregation and make it into a string
from
(
select group_name,theids,username
from ids_and_names
inner join
(select group_name,unnest(string_to_array(group_ids,'$')) as theids -- unnest a string_to_array to get rows
from groups_and_ids) i
on i.theids = cast(id as text)) a
group by group_name