Re: Inconsistent results in timestamp/interval comparison - Mailing list pgsql-general

From albrecht.dress@posteo.de
Subject Re: Inconsistent results in timestamp/interval comparison
Date
Msg-id 4faaea681e2e210bbfb7de92fc8cbb35@posteo.de
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Inconsistent results in timestamp/interval comparison  (Francisco Olarte <folarte@peoplecall.com>)
Responses Re: Inconsistent results in timestamp/interval comparison
List pgsql-general
Am 04.03.2024 13:45 schrieb Francisco Olarte:
> Intervals are composed of months, days and seconds, as not every month
> has 30 days and not every day has 86400 seconds, so to compare them
> you have to normalize them somehow, which can lead to bizarre results.

Ah, I see, thanks for the explanation.  I had the (apparently wrong)
impression that Postgres _internally_ always uses numerical values (i.e.
the equivalent of EXTRACT(EPOCH …)) for such calculations.  My bad…

However, a clarification in the docs might be helpful!

> If you want to do point in time arithmetic, you will be better of by
> extracting epoch from your timestamps and substracting that.

I can confirm that using the query

select now(), t1, extract(epoch from now() - t1) >= extract (epoch from
'2 years'::interval), now() >= (t1 + '2 years'::interval) from testtab;

produces consistent results.

Thanks a lot for your help,
Albrecht.



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