Re: proposal: fix corner use case of variadic fuctions usage - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Robert Haas
Subject Re: proposal: fix corner use case of variadic fuctions usage
Date
Msg-id CA+TgmoYPU4henJ8mt1zHYHkY_grndUhM4VYM8MtGEXBatrzvrw@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: proposal: fix corner use case of variadic fuctions usage  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-hackers
On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 2:28 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> writes:
>> what should be result of concat(variadic NULL::int[])
>> I enabled this use case, but what should be result?
>
> I think there are two somewhat defensible theories:
>
> (1) punt, and return NULL overall.  So in this case the variadic
> function would act as if it were STRICT.  That seems a bit weird though
> if the function is not strict otherwise.
>
> (2) Treat the NULL as if it were a zero-length array, giving rise to
> zero ordinary parameters.  This could be problematic if the function
> can't cope very well with zero parameters ... but on the other hand,
> if it can't do so, then what will it do with VARIADIC '{}'::int[] ?
>
> I lean a little bit towards (2) but it's definitely a judgment call.
> Anybody have any other arguments one way or the other?

I'd like to vote for "it probably doesn't matter very much, so let's
just pick whatever makes the code simplest".  :-)

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company



pgsql-hackers by date:

Previous
From: Robert Haas
Date:
Subject: Re: Prepared statements fail after schema changes with surprising error
Next
From: Robert Haas
Date:
Subject: Re: logical changeset generation v4