Re: record identical operator - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Attached is a patch for a bit of infrastructure I believe to be
necessary for correct behavior of REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW
CONCURRENTLY as well as incremental maintenance of matviews.
[...]
The patch adds an "identical" operator (===) for the record type:
 

The new operator is logically similar to IS NOT DISTINCT FROM for a
record, although its implementation is very different.  For one
thing, it doesn't replace the operation with column level operators
in the parser.  For another thing, it doesn't look up operators for
each type, so the "identical" operator does not need to be
implemented for each type to use it as shown above.  It compares
values byte-for-byte, after detoasting.  The test for identical
records can avoid the detoasting altogether for any values with
different lengths, and it stops when it finds the first column with
a difference.

I toyed with the idea of supporting hashing of records using this
operator, but could not see how that would be a performance win.

The identical (===) and not identical (!==) operator names were
chosen because of a vague similarity to the "exactly equals"
concepts in JavaScript and PHP, which use that name.  The semantics
aren't quite the same, but it seemed close enough not to be too
surprising.  The additional operator names seemed natural to me
based on the first two, but I'm not really that attached to these
names for the operators if someone has a better idea.

Since the comparison of record values is not documented (only
comparisons involving row value constructors), it doesn't seem like
we should document this special case.  It is intended primarily for
support of matview refresh and maintenance, and it seems likely
that record comparison was not documented on the basis that it is
intended primarily for support of such things as indexing and merge
joins -- so leaving the new operators undocumented seems consistent
with existing policy.  I'm open to arguments that the policy should
change.

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