Negative numbers for PK/ID's?

From: Steve Midgley <public(at)misuse(dot)org>
To: pgsql-sql(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Negative numbers for PK/ID's?
Date: 2008-02-05 19:42:20
Message-ID: 20080205194233.CACE62E4479@postgresql.org
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Hi,

A while ago on a different SQL platform, I had the idea to use negative
numbers as id's for certain system records that I didn't prefer to have
interspersed with other records in a table. (For example, we had
"template" records which we used to spawn new records, and rather than
store them in a different table we just had records id=-1,-2 etc and
did an insert/select to create new "live" rows based on the templates).
Preventing them from displaying in the results was as simple as
ensuring that all select statements had a "id > 0" statement in them..

I'm wondering if there are any Bad Things that happen if I use negative
integers for primary key values in Postgres (v8.2)? My primary keys are
all bigserial type.

Any comments or advice?

Thanks!

Steve

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