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Brendan Jurd wrote:
> The attached patch implements my proposal to extend support for the
> ISO week date calendar.
>
> I have added two new format fields for use with to_char, to_date and
> to_timestamp:
> - ID for day-of-week
> - IDDD for day-of-year
>
> This makes it possible to convert ISO week dates to and from text
> fully represented in either week ('IYYY-IW-ID') or day-of-year
> ('IYYY-IDDD') format.
>
> I have also added an 'isoyear' field for use with extract / date_part.
>
> The patch includes documentation updates and some extra tests in the
> regression suite for the new fields.
>
> I have tried to implement these features with as little disruption to
> the existing code as possible. I built on the existing date2iso*
> functions in src/backend/utils/adt/timestamp.c, and added a few
> functions of my own, but I wonder if these functions would be more
> appropriately located in datetime.c, alongside date2j and j2date?
>
> I'd also like to raise the topic of how conversion from text to ISO
> week dates should be handled, where the user has specified a bogus
> mixture of fields. Existing code basically ignores these issues; for
> example, if a user were to call to_date('1998-01-01 2454050',
> 'YYYY-MM-DD J') the function returns 2006-01-01, a result of setting
> the year field from YYYY, then overwriting year, month and day with
> the values from the Julian date in J, then setting the month and day
> normally from MM and DD.
>
> 2006-01-01 is not a valid representation of either of the values the
> user specified. Now you might say "ask a silly question, get a silly
> answer"; the user shouldn't send nonsense arguments to to_date and
> expect a sensible result. But perhaps the right way to respond to a
> broken timestamp definition is to throw an error, rather than behave
> as though everything has gone to plan, and return something which is
> not correct.
>
> The same situation can arise if the user mixes ISO and Gregorian data;
> how should Postgres deal with something like to_date('2006-250',
> 'IYYY-DDD')? The current behaviour in my patch is actually to assume
> that the user meant to say 'IYYY-IDDD', since "the 250th Gregorian day
> of the ISO year 2006" is total gibberish. But perhaps it should be
> throwing an error message.
>
> That's all for now, thanks for your time.
> BJ
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--
Bruce Momjian bruce@momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com
+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
