Re: Bug #463: Make 'infinity' work with type 'date'

From: Thomas Lockhart <lockhart(at)fourpalms(dot)org>
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us>
Cc: dax(at)gurulabs(dot)com, pgsql-bugs(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Bug #463: Make 'infinity' work with type 'date'
Date: 2001-10-12 05:35:42
Message-ID: 3BC6812E.7C774540@fourpalms.org
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-bugs

> Can someone comment on this? The problem appears in current sources:

And for every Postgres release since 1989...

> test=> INSERT INTO a VALUES ('infinity');
> ERROR: Unrecognized date external representation 'infinity'
> Is there a reason we support "infinity" in timestamp and not date?

Sure. Timestamp features were based on abstime features (at least partly
to support conversions to the newer type), and date features are from
date. "Infinity" for timestamp (or date) is not as compelling as it is
for abstime, which has a very limited range. I've been a fan of those
nifty features, but am not sure they are really necessary now that
PostgreSQL supports NULLs for pass by value types and supports a wider
range in the timestamp type (date has always had a wide range).

- Thomas

In response to

Browse pgsql-bugs by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message pgsql-bugs 2001-10-12 09:26:58 Bug #480: problem with LIKE pattern matches involving % and \_
Previous Message pgsql-bugs 2001-10-12 01:52:10 Bug #479: Backend crashes when using certain commands with SJIS encoded databases