Re: Fixed length data types issue

Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> writes:
> On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 11:57:26AM +0100, Gregory Stark wrote:
>> Just brain storming here. But what happens if we make Datum 2*sizeof(pointer)
>> and stored the typmod and/or attlen in it?

> The fundamental property of a Datum is that you can pass it by value to
> a C function. This generally means it has to fit in a register. On the
> whole, the CPU register size is the same as the pointer size, so
> 2*sizeof(pointer) is unlikely to fit...

Not to mention the problem that such a change would break every single
datatype-manipulation function in both the core backend and every
user-written datatype.  I don't think we're going there.
        regards, tom lane