Re: [PATCH] Exorcise "zero-dimensional" arrays

Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> writes:
> I understand, but I don't agree. W have to fix impractical design of
> arrays early. A ARRAY is 1st class - so there is not possible to use
> varchar2 trick.
>
> if we don't would to use GUC, what do you think about compatible
> extension? We can overload a system functions behave. This can solve a
> problem with updates and migrations.

In Common Lisp arrays are multi-dimensional too, and the 1-D arrays have
a specific name, they call them vectors. If you create an array with
only 1 dimension, then it's a vector. All the array API works the same
on vectors.

I guess we could specialize some of our API on vectors and avoid having
to tell the system which dimension we are interested into when using
them rather than multi-dimensional arrays.

Now from the internals perspective I also guess we don't want to be
generating so many more types so maybe we would need some tricks to know
how to promote a 1-D array into a vector automatically?

--
Dimitri Fontaine
http://2ndQuadrant.fr     PostgreSQL : Expertise, Formation et Support