Re: SIGFPE handling

Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka(at)iki(dot)fi> writes:
> On 12/11/2026 17:17, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Agree on #2, violently against #1. Why is it an improvement for
>> division-by-zero to take down the entire system?

> It seems unsafe to assume that you can gracefully recover from an ERROR
> on any division-by-zero. Imagine a snippet like this:

> LWLockAcquire(FooLock, LW_EXCLUSIVE);
> shmem->foo = DONE;
> shmem->bar = 100 / x;
> LWLockRelease(FooLock);

This strikes me as a very artificial example. How likely is it that
people will be doing potential division-by-zero within a critical
section? Can't the same argument be used to claim that, say,
OOM within palloc() needs to be a PANIC?

Meanwhile, while it may be true that the core code is careful not to
cause division-by-zero, I really doubt that that statement can be
promised to hold across our extension ecosystem.

I remain of the opinion that changing this will make for a net
decrease in system stability, not an increase.

regards, tom lane