Just noticed something odd with a column of type "char". According to
the docs (and the way my old PG ran), the character data-type is
blank-padded. I'm not seeing that on one of my current machines (8.3.8)
or, perhaps I'm going blind on Friday. Was the definition of char changed?
Here is what I am seeing:
steve=> create temporary table foo (bar char(10));
CREATE TABLE
steve=> \d foo
Table "pg_temp_2.foo"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+---------------+-----------
bar | character(10) |
steve=> insert into foo values ('');
INSERT 0 1
steve=> insert into foo values ('asd');
INSERT 0 1
steve=> insert into foo values ('asdfasdf');
INSERT 0 1
steve=> insert into foo values ('asdfasdfas');
INSERT 0 1
steve=> insert into foo values ('asdfasdfasd');
ERROR: value too long for type character(10)
steve=>=> select bar,length(bar),char_length(bar) from foo;
bar | length | char_length
------------+--------+-------------
| 0 | 0
asd | 3 | 3
asdfasdf | 8 | 8
asdfasdfas | 10 | 10
select bar,length(bar) from foo;
Cheers,
Steve