Re: GUC time unit spelling a bit inconsistent

From: "Joshua D(dot) Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
To: Andrew Sullivan <ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca>
Cc: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: GUC time unit spelling a bit inconsistent
Date: 2007-06-22 14:40:24
Message-ID: 467BDF58.5040309@commandprompt.com
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Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 03:24:51PM +0200, Michael Paesold wrote:
>> There are valid reasons against 5m as mega-bytes, because here m does
>> not refer to a unit, it refers to a quantifier (if that is a reasonable
>> English word) of a unit. So it should really be 5mb.
>>
>> log_rotation_age = 5m
>> log_rotation_size = 5mb
>
> Except, of course, that "5mb" would be understood by those of us who
> work in metric and use both bits and bytes as 5 millibits.

I at one point submitted a patch to make units case insensitive, I have
since submitting that patch decided that was a horrible idea. Why can't
we use standard units? Mb, Kb, KB, MB... (I don't know the standard unit
for minutes).

The more I see this going back and forth it seems we should just do it
right the first time and tell everyone else to read:

The fine manual
The spec(s) that define the units.

Joshua D. Drake

> Which
> would be an absurd value, but since Postgres had support for time
> travel once, who knows what other wonders the developers have come up
> with ;-) (I will note, though, that this B vs b problem really gets
> up my nose, especially when I hear people who are ostensibly
> designing networks talking about "gigabyte ethernet" cards. I would
> _like_ such a card, I confess, but to my knowledge the standard
> hasn't gotten that far yet.)
>
> Nevertheless, I think that Tom's original suggestion was at least a
> HINT, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
>
> A
>

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