Re: Proposal to introduce a shuffle function to intarray extension

Martin Kalcher <martin.kalcher@aboutsource.net> writes:
> Am 16.07.22 um 23:56 schrieb Thomas Munro:
>> I understand that this is a specialised int[] shuffle, but I wonder if
>> someone would ever want to have a general array shuffle, and how that
>> would work, in terms of naming convention etc.

> - I am not shure about the naming. intarray has generic names like
>    sort() and uniq() and specialised names like icount(). I guess in case
>    someone wants to have a general array shuffle it could be accomplished
>    with function overloading. Or am i wrong here?

I suppose this is exactly the point Thomas was wondering about: if we
use a generic function name for this, will it cause problems for someone
trying to add a generic function later?

We can investigate that question with a couple of toy functions:

regression=# create function foo(int[]) returns text as 'select ''int[] version''' language sql;
CREATE FUNCTION
regression=# create function foo(anyarray) returns text as 'select ''anyarray version''' language sql;
CREATE FUNCTION
regression=# select foo('{1,2,3}');
ERROR:  function foo(unknown) is not unique
LINE 1: select foo('{1,2,3}');
               ^
HINT:  Could not choose a best candidate function. You might need to add explicit type casts.

OK, that's not too surprising: with an unknown input there's just not
anything that the parser can use to disambiguate.  But this happens
with just about any overloaded name, so I don't think it's a showstopper.

regression=# select foo('{1,2,3}'::int[]);
      foo
---------------
 int[] version
(1 row)

regression=# select foo('{1,2,3}'::int8[]);
       foo
------------------
 anyarray version
(1 row)

Good, that's more or less the minimum functionality we should expect.

regression=# select foo('{1,2,3}'::int2[]);
ERROR:  function foo(smallint[]) is not unique
LINE 1: select foo('{1,2,3}'::int2[]);
               ^
HINT:  Could not choose a best candidate function. You might need to add explicit type casts.

Oh, that's slightly annoying ...

regression=# select foo('{1,2,3}'::oid[]);
       foo
------------------
 anyarray version
(1 row)

regression=# select foo('{1,2,3}'::text[]);
       foo
------------------
 anyarray version
(1 row)

regression=# select foo('{1,2,3}'::float8[]);
       foo
------------------
 anyarray version
(1 row)

I couldn't readily find any case that misbehaves except for int2[].
You can force that to work, at least in one direction:

regression=# select foo('{1,2,3}'::int2[]::int[]);
      foo
---------------
 int[] version
(1 row)

On the whole, I'd vote for calling it shuffle(), and expecting that
we'd also use that name for any future generic version.  That's
clearly the easiest-to-remember definition, and it doesn't seem
like the gotchas are bad enough to justify using separate names.

> - I added a second function sample(), because it is a lot faster to take
>    some elements from an array than to shuffle the whole array and
>    slice it. This function can be removed if it is not wanted.

I have no opinion about whether this one is valuable enough to include in
intarray, but I do feel like sample() is a vague name, and easily confused
with marginally-related operations like TABLESAMPLE.  Can we think of a
more on-point name?  Something like "random_subset" would be pretty
clear, but it's also clunky.  It's too late here for me to think of
le mot juste...

            regards, tom lane