Re: int4 vs varchar to store ip addr

* Pomarede Nicolas:

> I could use PG internal inet/cidr type to store the ip addrs, which
> would take 12 bytes per IP, thus gaining a few bytes per row.

I thought it's down to 8 bytes in PostgreSQL 8.2, but I could be
mistaken.

> Apart from gaining some bytes, would the btree index scan be faster
> with this data type compared to plain varchar ?

It will be faster because less I/O is involved.

For purposes like yours, there is a special ip4 type in a contributed
package which brings down the byte count to 4.  I'm not sure if it's
been ported to PostgreSQL 8.2 yet.

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