Re: [BUGS] BUG #14244: wrong suffix for pg_size_pretty()

On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 1:43 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 01:30:29PM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 8:18 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
>> > and the units were copied when pg_size_pretty() was implemented. These
>> > units are based on the International System of Units (SI)/metric.
>> > However, the SI system is power-of-10-based, and we just re-purposed
>> > them to be 1024 or 2^10-based.
>> >
>> > However, that is not the end of the story.
>>
>> Sure it is. The behavior of the code matches the documentation. The
>> documentation describes one of several reasonable behaviors. Full
>> stop.
>>
>> > I am thinking Postgres 10 would be a good time to switch to KB as a
>> > 1024-based prefix. Unfortunately, there is no similar fix for MB, GB,
>> > etc. 'm' is 'milli' so there we never used mB, so in JEDEC and Metric,
>> > MB is ambiguous as 1000-based or 1024-based.
>>
>> I think this would be a backward compatibility break that would
>> probably cause confusion for years. I think we can add new functions
>> that behave differently, but I oppose revising the behavior of the
>> existing functions ... and I *definitely* oppose adding new
>> behavior-changing GUCs. The result of that will surely be chaos.
>
> Can you read up through August 1 and then reply?

I have already read the entire thread, and replied only after reading
all messages.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company