Re: to_date_valid()

On 27.07.2016 05:00, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On 07/26/2016 06:25 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>> On 7/5/16 4:24 AM, Albe Laurenz wrote:
>>> But notwithstanding your feeling that you would like your application
>>> to break if it makes use of this behaviour, it is a change that might
>>> make some people pretty unhappy - nobody can tell how many.
>>
>> What is the use of the existing behavior? You get back an arbitrary
>> implementation dependent value. We don't even guarantee what the value
>> will be. If we changed it to return a different implementation
>> dependent value, would users get upset?
>
> No they would not get upset because they wouldn't know.
>
> Can we just do the right thing?

I'm in favour of fixing this, and update the documentation. But given
the discussions in the past, it seemed like people actually depend on
this behaviour. Hence the additional function.

if this is fixed, it's too late for the current beta. But it's a good
time to add a note in the release notes, and advise people that it will
be changed in the next release.

A workaround can be to rename the current function to something like
"to_date_legacy", or "to_date_oracle". And implement the checks in to_date.

--
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
German PostgreSQL User Group
European PostgreSQL User Group - Board of Directors
Volunteer Regional Contact, Germany - PostgreSQL Project