Re: Single character bitfields - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Andrew Maclean
Subject Re: Single character bitfields
Date
Msg-id 018801c903d9$f027b350$d07719f0$@maclean@cas.edu.au
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Single character bitfields  (Tomasz Ostrowski <tometzky@batory.org.pl>)
List pgsql-general
-----Original Message-----
From: Tomasz Ostrowski [mailto:tometzky@batory.org.pl]
Sent: Thursday, 21 August 2008 18:46
To: a.maclean@cas.edu.au
Cc: General
Subject: Re: Single character bitfields

On 2008-08-21 05:29, Andrew Maclean wrote:

> Is char(1) one byte in size?

No. It will also depend on database encoding, etc.

I think you should go with smallint, which is exactly 2 bytes. You'll
have 15 bits of storage (16 if you'd want to implement the special case
of minus sign).

IMHO the only smaller field are:
- one byte boolean, but it can only store 1 bit.
- one byte "char" (with quotes), but it is a non standard, integral
type, will cause interface problems and I don't know if it will not be
deprecated some time.

Regards
Tometzky
--
...although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a
moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you
were...
                                                      Winnie the Pooh


Thankyou for this, after reading around I have also come to the same
conclusion that smallint is the better option.

Andrew



pgsql-general by date:

Previous
From: Bill
Date:
Subject: Text field truncated using ADO/ODBC?
Next
From: "Andrew Maclean"
Date:
Subject: Re: Single character bitfields