Re: polymorphic types - enforce casting to most common type automatically

Hi

I am sending a proof concept. Current implementation is not suboptimal - I wrote this code for demonstration of current issues, and checking possible side effects of changes in this patch.

The basic problem is strong restrictive implementation of polymorphic types - now these types doesn't allow any cast although it is possible. It can be changed relatively simply I though (after we implemented variadic functions).

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public.foo1(anyelement, anyelement)
 RETURNS anyelement
 LANGUAGE sql
AS $function$
SELECT $1 + $2;
$function$

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public.foo2(anyelement, anyelement)
 RETURNS anyarray
 LANGUAGE sql
AS $function$
SELECT ARRAY[$1, $2]
$function$

Now, polymorphic functions don't allow some natively expected calls:

postgres=# select foo1(1,1);
 foo1
------
    2
(1 row)

postgres=# select foo1(1,1.1);
ERROR:  function foo1(integer, numeric) does not exist
LINE 1: select foo1(1,1.1);
               ^
HINT:  No function matches the given name and argument types. You might need to add explicit type casts.

postgres=# select foo2(1,1);
 foo2 
-------
 {1,1}
(1 row)

postgres=# select foo2(1,1.1);
ERROR:  function foo2(integer, numeric) does not exist
LINE 1: select foo2(1,1.1);
               ^
HINT:  No function matches the given name and argument types. You might need to add explicit type casts.


CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public.foo3(VARIADIC anyarray)
 RETURNS anyelement
 LANGUAGE sql
AS $function$
SELECT min(v) FROM unnest($1) g(v)
$function$

postgres=# SELECT foo3(1,2,3);
 foo3
------
    1
(1 row)

postgres=# SELECT foo3(1,2,3.1);
ERROR:  function foo3(integer, integer, numeric) does not exist
LINE 1: SELECT foo3(1,2,3.1);
               ^
HINT:  No function matches the given name and argument types. You might need to add explicit type casts.

Some our functions like COALESCE are not too restrictive and allow to use types from same category.

postgres=# select coalesce(1,1.1);
 coalesce
----------
        1
(1 row)

With attached patch the polymorphic functions use same mechanism as our buildin functions. It is applied on ANYARRAY, ANYELEMENT types only.

postgres=# select foo1(1,1.1), foo2(1,1.1), foo3(1.1,2,3.1);
 foo1 |  foo2   | foo3
------+---------+------
  2.1 | {1,1.1} |  1.1
(1 row)

Comments, notices, ... ?

Regards

Pavel

2014-11-24 20:52 GMT+01:00 Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>:

Hello

now a functions with more than one polymorphic arguments are relative fragile due missing casting to most common type. Some our "functions" like "coalesce" can do it, so it is surprising for our users.

our custom polymorphic function foo(anyelement, anyelement) working well for

foo(10,20) or foo(10.1, 20.1), but not for foo(10, 20.1)

I am thinking, so we can add a searching most common type stage without breaking to backing compatibility.

What do you think about it?

Regards

Pavel