> Actually, the original argument for negative attno's for dropped columns
> was exactly for this case, that the system column check would catch
> dropped columns too, but it causes other problems that are harder to fix
> so we _dropped_ the idea.
Well, negative attnums are a good idea and yes, you sort of avoid all these
problems. However, the backend is _full_ of stuff like this:
if (attnum < 0)elog(ERROR, "Cannot footle system attribute.");
But the problem is that we'd have to change all of them anyway in a negative
attnum implementation, since they're not system attributes, they're dropped
columns.
But let's not start another thread about this!!
Chris