Thread: Reported type mismatch improperly

Currently when we call select_common_type, it compares the 2 exprs, if the expr

type of both are unknown, it will be set to TEXTOID with some reasons, which

can cause the issue like below.


postgres=# select null union all select null union all select 1;
ERROR:  UNION types text and integer cannot be matched
LINE 1: select null union all select null union all select 1;


In this case, we can't blame the user,  they may want the nulls to be at the top

of the result. 

I worked on a patch to fix this, the main idea is before going to the above
logic, I peak all the exprs for a given column first, and choose a default one
when we see the Unknown & Unknown case(rather than TextOid),  

do you think it is ok?

On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 2:00 AM Andy Fan <zhihui.fan1213@gmail.com> wrote:

Currently when we call select_common_type, it compares the 2 exprs, if the expr

type of both are unknown, it will be set to TEXTOID with some reasons, which

can cause the issue like below.


postgres=# select null union all select null union all select 1;
ERROR:  UNION types text and integer cannot be matched
LINE 1: select null union all select null union all select 1;


In this case, we can't blame the user,  they may want the nulls to be at the top

of the result. 

This seems like a win in terms of benefit for effort.  Today we just instruct users to cast the first null

- which they still need to be aware of even though this patch removes one situation where it matters.

I worked on a patch to fix this, the main idea is before going to the above
logic, I peak all the exprs for a given column first, and choose a default one
when we see the Unknown & Unknown case(rather than TextOid),  

do you think it is ok?

The comment in parse_coerce.c needs to be updated.

I'm not sure what the general protocol here is for code comments and pointing out that they are not good examples of English prose.  Documentation prose has a higher bar but I don't know how big the gap is.

make issues: variable previous_is_null set but not used warning

make installcheck passes

You should include tests for the other SETOPS if this is intended to work for those as well.  And maybe the failure mode where there are two non-null possibilities in the tree and the first one matches while the second is of a different type.

Nothing in the code itself stands out to me and I'm not going to mark this ready for committer myself (though its not ready yet per the remarks above) due to inexperience in C coding so another reviewer will be needed.

You should add this to the 2020-09 commitfest.

 

On Friday, July 17, 2020, Andy Fan <zhihui.fan1213@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 12:23 AM David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:

- which they still need to be aware of even though this patch removes one situation where it matters.

Can you provide an example of this?  If it is not very troublesome,  I'd like to fix both.

Nothing concrete off hand, more of an impression.

David J.

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 12:28 PM David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, July 17, 2020, Andy Fan <zhihui.fan1213@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 12:23 AM David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:

- which they still need to be aware of even though this patch removes one situation where it matters.

Can you provide an example of this?  If it is not very troublesome,  I'd like to fix both.

Nothing concrete off hand, more of an impression.

David J.

Improve some comments and test cases, and submit it https://commitfest.postgresql.org/29/2653/ .