Re: Things I don't like about \du's "Attributes" column

From: Isaac Morland <isaac(dot)morland(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: Pavel Luzanov <p(dot)luzanov(at)postgrespro(dot)ru>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Things I don't like about \du's "Attributes" column
Date: 2023-12-30 14:33:59
Message-ID: CAMsGm5fDAVUTPeLAK-CjhrC7obQd-+i0EFPzAHFTMQrRoFaydA@mail.gmail.com
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On Sat, 30 Dec 2023 at 09:23, Pavel Luzanov <p(dot)luzanov(at)postgrespro(dot)ru>
wrote:

> I think that writing the value "infinity" in places where there is no
> value is
> not a good thing. This hides the real value of the column. In addition,
> there is no reason to set "infinity" when the password is always valid with
> default NULL.
>

Would it make sense to make the column non-nullable and always set it to
infinity when there is no expiry?

In this case, I think NULL simply means infinity, so why not write that? If
the timestamp type didn't have infinity, then NULL would be a natural way
of saying that there is no expiry, but with infinity as a possible value, I
don't see any reason to think of no expiry as being the absence of an
expiry time rather than an infinite expiry time.

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