Re: ipv4 data type does not allow to use % as subnet mask delimiter

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> On sn, 2010-11-14 at 16:46 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>> I believe we looked into that some time ago and decided that the
>> behavior was too platform-dependent to be worth messing with.

> I suppose the problem is that the zone identifier could be almost any
> string, and storing that would upset the inet storage format.

That was one problem --- but since inet is already varlena, I think that
adding a string wouldn't be fatal in itself. The real problem IMO is
that the specific strings aren't standardized, so an inet value that is
valid on one platform might not be valid on another. Simple concepts
like comparing for equality also get hard if you don't know how the
platform actually interprets the strings.

> Then again, this is part of the IPv6 standard, so just giving up might
> not be sustainable in the long run.

Possibly someday the standard will actually standardize the things,
and then maybe we can work with them usefully ...

regards, tom lane