Re: Interval "1 month" is equals to interval "30 days" - WHY? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Albe Laurenz
Subject Re: Interval "1 month" is equals to interval "30 days" - WHY?
Date
Msg-id D960CB61B694CF459DCFB4B0128514C20841979F@exadv11.host.magwien.gv.at
Whole thread Raw
In response to Interval "1 month" is equals to interval "30 days" - WHY?  (Dmitry Koterov <dmitry@koterov.ru>)
Responses Re: Interval "1 month" is equals to interval "30 days" - WHY?  (Dmitry Koterov <dmitry@koterov.ru>)
Re: Interval "1 month" is equals to interval "30 days" - WHY?  (Craig Ringer <ringerc@ringerc.id.au>)
List pgsql-general
Dmitry Koterov wrote:
>> I've just discovered a very strange thing:
>>
>> SELECT '1 mon'::interval = '30 days'::interval   --> TRUE???
>>
>> This returns TRUE (also affected when I create an unique index using
an
>> interval column). Why?
>>
>> I know that Postgres stores monthes, days and seconds in interval
values
>> separately. So how to make "=" to compare intervals "part-by-part"
and not
>> treat "1 mon" as "30 days"?
>>
>> P.S.
>> Reproduced at least in 8.4 and 9.1.

> ...and even worse:
>
> SELECT ('1 year'::interval) = ('360 days'::interval); --> TRUE :-)
> SELECT ('1 year'::interval) = ('365 days'::interval); --> FALSE :-)

Intervals are internally stored in three fields: months, days
and microseconds.  A year has 12 months.

PostgreSQL converts intervals into microseconds before comparing them:
a month is converted to 30 days, and a day is converted to 24 hours.

Of course this is not always correct.
But what should the result of
  INTERVAL '1 month' = INTERVAL '30 days'
be?  FALSE would be just as wrong.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

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