Re: Supporting NULL elements in arrays - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Ron Mayer
Subject Re: Supporting NULL elements in arrays
Date
Msg-id 437240BF.9080907@cheapcomplexdevices.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Supporting NULL elements in arrays  (Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com>)
Responses Re: Supporting NULL elements in arrays  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-hackers
Joe Conway wrote:
> 
> Last time I thought about this problem, that's what I concluded. I don't 
> think there is a reasonable and backward compatible solution.
> 
> I also think the best non-compatible solution is to require non-numeric 
> elements to be delimited (double quotes, configurable?), and use NULL 
> unadorned to represent NULL.


If we're going non-computable, would something that's a superset
of the SQL Standard's array value constructor be useful; or is
the standard's arrays so limited as to not even address the
things that cause issues for postgresql arrays?

If I read the confusing thing right, I think the standard
does use NULL for nulls in arrays, single-quotes for strings,
etc. like "ARRAY['FOO',null,'BAR']" and unadorned numbers
for numbers in arrays.   That's similar to what I think Joe
suggested, but with single rather than double quotes?


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