Re: Couple document fixes - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Alvaro Herrera
Subject Re: Couple document fixes
Date
Msg-id 1299856725-sup-5827@alvh.no-ip.org
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Couple document fixes  (Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>)
Responses Re: Couple document fixes
Re: Couple document fixes
List pgsql-hackers
Removing CC to pg-docs so that Robert reads it.

Excerpts from Bruce Momjian's message of vie mar 11 08:13:20 -0300 2011:
> Kevin Grittner wrote:

> > relpersistence should be <type>"char"</type>, not <type>char</type>.
> > Oddly enough, there is a difference.
> 
> I am unsure on that one.  We have many 'char' mentions in catalog.sgml,
> and I don't see any of them shown as '"char"'.  (Wow, we should have
> just called this type char1, but I think that name came from Berkeley!) 
> The big problem is that the pg_type name is really "char" _without_
> quotes.

One idea is to rename the type to something else.  We could keep "char"
as an alias for backwards compatibility, but use the new name in system
catalogs, and document it as the main name of the type.

Discussed the idea a bit on IM with Bruce, but couldn't find any really
good alternative.  Idea floated so far:

* byte (seems pretty decent to me)
* octet (though maybe people would expect it'd output as a number)
* char1 (looks ugly, but then we have int4 and so on)
* achar (this one is just plain weird)

None seems great.  Thoughts?

-- 
Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support


pgsql-hackers by date:

Previous
From: Bruce Momjian
Date:
Subject: Re: pg_basebackup and wal streaming
Next
From: Tom Lane
Date:
Subject: Re: Couple document fixes