Is this legal???

From: Ronald Baljeu <rjb(at)xs4all(dot)nl>
To: hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org
Cc: rjb(at)xs4all(dot)nl
Subject: Is this legal???
Date: 1998-04-08 14:39:53
Message-ID: 199804081439.QAA01841@xs1.xs4all.nl
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Hi hackers,

I have an SQL-question and a related core dump :-)

> create table test
> (
> col1 text,
> col2 text,
> col3 text
> );
> CREATE
> insert into test values ('one', 'two', 'three');
> INSERT 96299 1
> select col1, count(*) from test group by col1;
> col1|count
> ----+-----
> one | 1
> (1 row)

Now I am going to do something illegal:

> select col1, col3, count(*) from test group by col1;
> ERROR: parser: illegal use of aggregates or non-group column in target list

Obviously, I did not use the aggregate correctly, but look at the last
bit of this error message. If I understand this correctly, all the columns
in the target list must also be stated in the grouping list. In a way,
this makes sense, because the extra columns in the target list
would be undefined: these columns would originate from a random row (tuple)
per group.

My question: is the following query legal?

> select col1, col3 from test group by col1;
> col1|col3
> ----+-----
> one |three
> (1 row)

Shouldn't Postgres complain about 'col3'? It is not in the grouping list.

What actually brought me to that question is a core dump in a (faulty)
query which, after isolating the problem, looks like this:

> select col1, col3 from test where 1 = 1 group by col1;
> FATAL: unrecognized data from the backend. It probably dumped core.
> FATAL: unrecognized data from the backend. It probably dumped core.

If I delete the '1 = 1' or replace 'col3' by 'col2' the query produces
normal results. I'm running the snapshot of April 6 on Linux kernel 2.0.33.

Cheers,
Ronald

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