On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 03:51:39PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com> writes:
> > On 5/11/21 1:30 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >> It just feels like this change makes the function's behavior less
> >> consistent.
>
> > See Tom's commit message here:
> > https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=3d0f68dd30612
>
> > In particular:
>
> > "The variants of these functions that take
> > numeric inputs (OIDs or column numbers) are
> > supposed to return NULL rather than failing
> > on bad input; this rule reduces problems with
> > snapshot skew when queries apply the functions
> > to all rows of a catalog."
>
> Yeah, the null-return-for-bad-numeric-input behavior is important.
> Perhaps a case could be made for returning null for bad text
> input too, but I don't recall that anybody has asked for that.
>
> A case could also be made that changing the behavior on the text
> side would break applications that expect the current behavior.
> So I'm disinclined to make a wholesale change there, without more
> evidence that it's a good idea.
OK, as long as we thought about this, I am fine.
--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com
If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.