Brendan Jurd <direvus@gmail.com> writes:
> For example, you're trying to import a date that is written as "Wed
> 3rd March, Q1 2010". You might give to_date a format string like 'Dy
> FMDDTH Month, "Q"Q YYYY' and expect to get the correct answer. If we
> start throwing an error on the Q field, then users would have to
> resort to some strange circumlocution to get around it.
Hmm. That's an interesting test case: if Q throws an error, there
doesn't seem to be any way to do it at all, because there is no format
spec for ignoring non-constant text. Conversely, Bruce's proposed
patch would actually break it, because the Q code would overwrite the
(correct) month information with the first-month-of-the-quarter.
So at the moment my vote is "leave it alone". If we want to throw
error for Q then we should provide a substitute method of ignoring
a field. But we could just document Q as ignoring an integer for
input.
regards, tom lane