On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:
>> ... I think if you relaxed
>> the function sigs of a few functions on this page
>> (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/functions-string.html),
>> most reported problems would go away.
>
> That's an interesting way of approaching it. Do we have any data on
> exactly which functions people do complain about?
After a few minutes of google-fu, lpad seems to top the list (if you
don't count operator related issues which I think are mostly coding
bugs).
see: http://drupal.org/node/1338188.
also upper: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3447417&group_id=171772&atid=859223..
also substring: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2008-01/msg00001.php
note in two of the above cases the bugs were raised through 3rd party
issue trackers :/. Interestingly, if you look at popular
postgresql-only functions, such as regexp_replace, google seems to
indicate there's not much problem there. This, IMNSHO, reinforces
Robert's point -- but it seems to mostly bite people porting code,
running cross database code bases, or having a strong background in
other systems.
I found a few non-string cases, especially round().
merlin
