Re: LEAST and GREATEST functions?

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: Ang Chin Han <angch(at)bytecraft(dot)com(dot)my>
Cc: Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu>, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>, Stefan Bill <sjb26(at)yahoo(dot)com>, pgsql-sql(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: LEAST and GREATEST functions?
Date: 2003-07-02 06:36:44
Message-ID: 25189.1057127804@sss.pgh.pa.us
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Ang Chin Han <angch(at)bytecraft(dot)com(dot)my> writes:
> I'd say we need to have LEAST and GREATEST at least somewhere in contrib
> (as functions) if not core, to make transition from other RDBMS to
> postgresql easier.
> A brief test shows that we would incur quite a performance penalty (I
> compared COALESCE with coalesce_sql_function) if it isn't hardwiring.

In 7.4 I think that tradeoff will change significantly. SQL functions
are polymorphic thanks to Joe Conway, and they're inline-able thanks
to me ;-), so there's really no difference between writing the strictly
SQL-compliant

SELECT CASE WHEN a>b THEN a ELSE b END FROM foo;

and writing

create function greatest(anyelement, anyelement) returns anyelement as
'select case when $1>$2 then $1 else $2 end' language sql;

SELECT greatest(a,b) FROM foo;

You do have to create several greatest() functions for different numbers
of arguments, but not one for each datatype you want to handle.

I have not seen enough requests for a native LEAST/GREATEST
implementation to make me think we need to do more than this...
certainly I'd rather spend development effort on general facilities
like polymorphism and inlining than on creating one-use facilities
like built-in LEAST/GREATEST.

regards, tom lane

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