Re: effective_cache_size vs units

"Kenneth Marshall" <ktm(at)it(dot)is(dot)rice(dot)edu> writes:

> My one comment is that a little 'b' is used to indicate bits normally
> and a capital 'B' is used to indicate bytes. So
> kb = '1024 bits'
> kB = '1024 bytes'
> I do think that whether or not the k/m/g is upper case or lower case
> is immaterial.

Yes, well, no actually there are standard capitalizations for the k and M and
G. A lowercase g is a gram and a lowercase m means "milli-".

But I think that only gets you as far as concluding that Postgres ought to
consistently use kB MB and GB in its own output. Which afaik it does.

To reach a conclusion about whether it should restrict valid user input
similarly you would have to make some sort of argument about what problems it
could lead to if we allow users to be sloppy.

I could see such an argument being made but it requires a lot of speculation
about hypothetical future parameters and future problems. When we have known
real problems today.

And yes, btw, the case sensitivity of these units had already surprised and
bothered me earlier and I failed to mention it at the time.

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com