Re: RfD: more powerful "any" types

* Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> [090910 16:16]:

> first is coming from C and has C semantic - there is only one possible
> tag (without binary compatible types) - you cannot use %s for numbers,
> and %d for strings is some specific value.
>
> sprintf("%d", "10") - show address of static string "10"
>
> second is Tom's proposal. More dynamic. Tag specify target type.
>
> so sprintf('%d', '10') show 10 with possible width manipulation operations

Just to make the task that much harder, if PostgreSQL is going to have a
sprintf (in core, or contrib), I *really* hope it's a real sprintf,
supporting everything, like:
$m positional notation
* width argument
All the flags [#0- +'] (I as a bonus)
field width . presision

And you're going to want to make sure you support all the regular
conversion specifiers (d/i/o/u/x/X/e/E/f/F/g/G/p/n/c/s)...

How to deal with types conflicting with the conversion specifier is
going to be something necessary to look at (And just crashing a-la-C
probably isn't nice).

If you're making sprintf, then it's going to need to be C-like, and it's
going to be a lot of tedious conversion/formating... Of course, I'ld
love to see it, because I can forever then forget about all that tedious
formatting in PosgreSQL...

a.

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