Re: (PATCH) Adding CORRESPONDING (NULL error)

I wrote:
> Kerem Kat <keremkat(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> Union with NULL error persists without the corresponding patch. Here
>> is the output from postgres without the patch:

>> SELECT a FROM (SELECT 1 a) foo
>> UNION
>> SELECT a FROM (SELECT NULL a) foo2;

>> ERROR: failed to find conversion function from unknown to integer

> Yeah, this is a longstanding issue that is not simple to fix without
> introducing other unpleasantnesses. It is not something you should
> try to deal with at the same time as implementing CORRESPONDING.

BTW, just to clarify: although that case fails, the case Erik was
complaining of does work in unmodified Postgres:

regression=# select 1 a , 2 b
union all
select null a, 4 b ;
a | b
---+---
1 | 2
| 4
(2 rows)

and I agree with him that it should still work with CORRESPONDING.
Even though the behavior of unlabeled NULLs is less than perfect,
we definitely don't want to break cases that work now. I suspect
the failure means that you tried to postpone too much work to plan
time. You do have to match up the columns honestly at parse time
and do the necessary type coercions on them then.

regards, tom lane