Thread: Re: [HACKERS] varchar() vs char16 performance

> >
> > > Will there be a warning about using a "depreciated type" in 6.4 or are
> > > we going to have this gunking up the grammer forever? :)
> >
> > Good idea. Then we can pull it out of the grammar sometime later. Now,
> > if these types are in a loadable module, then we can't actually do
> > anything in the parser anyway, since the loadable module would never
> > work. Are these character types worth keeping at all? Less support and
> > no performance benefit leaves me thinking not...
>
> IMHO, not worth keeping if the performance benefit is gone and the only
> real benefit though was the few bytes of header space they saved per field.
>

If char2 et al are going completely from 6.4, I think it would be sensible
for pg_dump to filter these types and change them to char(2) et al when
it writes the CREATE statments.

Best wishes,

Andrew

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Andrew C.R. Martin                             University College London
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> If char2 et al are going completely from 6.4, I think it would be sensible
> for pg_dump to filter these types and change them to char(2) et al when
> it writes the CREATE statments.
>

That is an interesting idea, but what about applications that use them?
I think we can have the parser change them for one release, then drop
them completely.

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