> At 8:16 AM 6/24/97, Thomas G. Lockhart wrote:
> >Postgres v6.1 allows one to specify a dimensionality for an array object
> >when declaring that object/column. However, that specification is not
> >used when decoding a field. Instead, the dimensionality is deduced from
> >the input string itself. The dimensionality is stored with each field,
> >and is used to encode the array on output. So, one is currently allowed
> >to mix array dimensions within a column, but Postgres seems to keep that
> >all straight for input and output.
>
> This sounds funny to me. You mean if a column contains an array, its
> dimension could vary from row to row? Maybe you want that sometimes, but I
> wouldn't think that was normally desirable.
>
> Maybe the correct solution is to have a normal, fixed dimension array type
> and a variable-dimension array type as well. If we have to pick one of the
> two I would vote for the fixed-dimension one. I think that is what you
> would normally want and it should find some kinds of user errors that the
> variable-dimension array type would miss.
>
The current behaviour isn't really a variable dimension array since what you
put in is not what you get out. You put in lots of curly brackets to
indicate the dimensionality, but you get out something which loses all
this information.
Andrew
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Dr. Andrew C.R. Martin University College London
EMAIL: (Work) martin@biochem.ucl.ac.uk (Home) andrew@stagleys.demon.co.uk
URL: http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/~martin
Tel: (Work) +44(0)171 419 3890 (Home) +44(0)1372 275775
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