Re: Declare variable-length catalog columns as [] rather than [1] - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Heikki Linnakangas
Subject Re: Declare variable-length catalog columns as [] rather than [1]
Date
Msg-id 2c7e5bf0-45d5-415a-b953-5ebd4d03119c@iki.fi
Whole thread
In response to Declare variable-length catalog columns as [] rather than [1]  (Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>)
Responses Re: Declare variable-length catalog columns as [] rather than [1]
List pgsql-hackers
On 22/09/2026 10:47, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Variable-length catalog columns have been declared like
> 
>      text attoptions[1];
> 
> but that "1" has always been a fiction.  Before the use of #ifdef 
> CATALOG_VARLEN, these declarations were visible to the C compiler, and 
> this was also before flexible array members were universally available, 
> so this was just a convenient workaround to make this compile.  But 
> these reasons are long gone, and the "1" is now just a confusing relic. 
> Change this to
> 
>      text attoptions[];
> 
> which more intuitively reflects the actual nature of these fields (while 
> still being syntactically valid but semantically invalid C code).
> 
> Catalog.pm could already parse both spellings, but no existing code used 
> bare [].  To enforce future consistency, it is changed to no longer 
> permit digits between the brackets.

+1, looks good to me.

- Heikki




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