Re: [HACKERS] char_length()? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tatsuo Ishii
Subject Re: [HACKERS] char_length()?
Date
Msg-id 20000123171635Q.t-ishii@sra.co.jp
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: [HACKERS] char_length()?  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-hackers
> Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp> writes:
> > char_length()/octet_length() for char() datatype returns a character
> > length *except* the trailing blanks. Is this what the standard
> > expects? Oracle's length() returns 3 in the case below.
> 
> AFAICT Oracle is right --- the spec just says
> 
>               i) If the data type of S is a character data type, then the
>                  result is the number of characters in the value of S.
> 
> and I can't see anything there about stripping pad characters.  You
> could ask for length(trim(S)) if you don't want to count blanks.

Ok, I have committed fixes for this. Maybe we should add this
incompatible changes to the release note:

char_length()/octet_length() for the char() datatype now returns a
character length (or byte length) including the trailing blanks.
--
Tatsuo Ishii


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