Re: Dumb question about serial's upper limit - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Dumb question about serial's upper limit
Date
Msg-id 10488.1129011743@sss.pgh.pa.us
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In response to Re: Dumb question about serial's upper limit  ("Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby@pervasive.com>)
Responses Re: Dumb question about serial's upper limit  ("Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby@pervasive.com>)
List pgsql-general
"Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby@pervasive.com> writes:
> Out of curiosity... why don't we have unsigned ints?

Quick, is 42 an int or an unsigned int?

I think it'd create a slew of new ambiguous cases in the
numeric-datatype hierarchy, for what is really pretty darn small gain.
We're already just barely getting by the problem that 42 might be
intended as an int2 or int8 constant --- and at least those three
datatypes have compatible comparison semantics, so that there aren't any
fundamental semantic problems created if you decide that a constant is
one or the other.  Adding unsigned types to the mix seems to me to be
likely to cause some serious issues.

But feel free to give it a try, if you think it's worth a nontrivial
amount of work.

            regards, tom lane

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