Thread: "It'd be better if there were not an implicit cast from int8 to text..."

Hm, I suppose this "kluge" in gram.y for "substr_list" isn't necessary any
more? Don't really see a downside to leaving it, just thought I would mention
it since I noticed the comment is outdated.
 | a_expr substr_for     {         /*          * Since there are no cases where this syntax allows          * a textual
FORvalue, we forcibly cast the argument          * to int4. This is a kluge to avoid surprising results          * when
theargument is, say, int8. It'd be better if          * there were not an implicit cast from int8 to text ...
*/        A_Const *n = makeNode(A_Const);         n->val.type = T_Integer;         n->val.val.ival = 1;         $$ =
list_make3($1,(Node *) n,                         makeTypeCast($2, SystemTypeName("int4")));     }
 


--  Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com

Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> Hm, I suppose this "kluge" in gram.y for "substr_list" isn't necessary any
> more?

It's still necessary, because if you write
select substring('1234' for '3');

you should get "123", but what you will get without the cast is "3"
because the preferred match will be to substring(text,text).

Also, the original example was from someone who had tried to use a
bigint column for the second parameter.  That case would start to draw
ERROR:  function pg_catalog.substring(unknown, bigint) does not exist
which doesn't seem helpful, when we know perfectly well that the only
functions this syntax should match take int4.

Probably the comment should be fixed.
        regards, tom lane