Re: [RFC] Unsigned integer support.

"Ryan Bradetich" <rbradetich(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:

> My plans for the example above would be:
>
> 1. SELECT 1500000000 + 1500000000 --> Throws overflow error.
> 2. SELECT 1500000000::uint4 + 1500000000 --> Returns 3000000000::uint4.

I think that wouldn't actually work. Postgres's parser immediately assigns a
type to the bare unquoted integral constant so it would end up with a int4
type. Then when it has to pick an operator for uint4+int4 it wouldn't be able
to cast the int4 to uint4 because there would be no implicit cast.

You could make it work by having a uint4+int4 operator which returns uint4 but
then you're going to need a *lot* of operators....

One other idea that's been mentioned before is treating integral constants
like 150000 as type "unknown" like the quoted '150000' constant is. That way
the parser would see uint4+unknown and could pick the uint4 operator. But that
would be a pretty massive semantics change.

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