Re: BUG #6401: IS DISTINCT FROM improperly compares geomoetric datatypes - Mailing list pgsql-bugs

From Heikki Linnakangas
Subject Re: BUG #6401: IS DISTINCT FROM improperly compares geomoetric datatypes
Date
Msg-id 4F17EFA0.6050903@enterprisedb.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to BUG #6401: IS DISTINCT FROM improperly compares geomoetric datatypes  (kenaniah@gmail.com)
Responses Re: BUG #6401: IS DISTINCT FROM improperly compares geomoetric datatypes  (Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>)
List pgsql-bugs
On 18.01.2012 23:14, kenaniah@gmail.com wrote:
> The following bug has been logged on the website:
>
> Bug reference:      6401
> Logged by:          Kenaniah Cerny
> Email address:      kenaniah@gmail.com
> PostgreSQL version: 9.1.2
> Operating system:   Centos 6 x86_64
> Description:
>
> ----
> SELECT point(2, 3) IS DISTINCT FROM point(2, 3);
> ----
> ERROR:  operator does not exist: point = point
> LINE 1: SELECT point(2, 3) IS DISTINCT FROM point(2, 3)
>                             ^
> HINT:  No operator matches the given name and argument type(s). You might
> need to add explicit type casts.
> ----
>
> According to the docs
> (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions-geometry.html#FUNCTIONS-GEOMETRY),
> the "same as" operator is the ~= operator,  not the = operator.

Yeah, unfortunately the code to transform IS DISTINCT FROM into the
corresponding operator doesn't know about that. In fact, you might
expect it to complain about missing "<>" operator, as "IS DISTINCT FROM"
is really more like inequality, but the planner in fact implements it
using the = operator, negating the result. That's because it's more
common for datatypes to have a = operator than <>. Curiously, that's not
the case with point datatype - it has a <> operator but not =.

Frankly that's such a rare corner case that I'm not very enthusiastic
about fixing it. One idea would be to look up the type's b-tree sort
operators, and pick the equality operator from there. But point datatype
doesn't have b-tree sort operators, either, so it wouldn't help in this
case.

--
   Heikki Linnakangas
   EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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