"Thomas G. Lockhart" <lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu> writes:
> This isn't a definitive answer and there may be another way to discover
> array-ness but it's where I would look. Not sure if you'd be happy
> having to do a select on pg_type for every query unless you're doing it
> already...

I think that won't fly for performance reasons.  I know I wouldn't want
my Tcl applications paying an additional frontend-to-backend round trip
for every SELECT result...

I was actually a tad surprised to realize that the column-type info sent
by the backend couldn't answer such a basic question as "is this an
array?".  Something to fix if we ever rev the FE/BE protocol again.
Don't think I'd propose a protocol rev just for this, though.

In the meantime, I'm inclined to take the fallback approach I suggested
yesterday: provide the array-to-list reformatting function as a separate
Tcl statement that the application programmer can decide to invoke.
The app writer is likely to know perfectly well where he needs that
feature anyway.

			regards, tom lane

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