• Tom Lane's avatar
    Rewrite list_qsort() to avoid trashing its input list. · 3cb1b2a8
    Tom Lane authored
    The initial implementation of list_qsort(), from commit ab727167,
    re-used the ListCells of the input list while not touching the List
    header.  This meant that anybody who still had a pointer to the
    original header would now be in possession of a corrupted list,
    a problem that seems sure to bite us eventually.
    
    One possible solution is to re-use the original List header as well,
    giving the function the semantics of update-in-place.  However, that
    doesn't seem like a very good idea either given the way that the
    function is used in the planner: create_path functions aren't normally
    supposed to modify their input lists.  It doesn't look like there would
    be a problem today, but it's not hard to foresee a time when modifying
    a list of Paths in-place could have side-effects on some other append
    path.
    
    On the whole, and in view of the likelihood that this function might
    be used in other contexts in the future, it seems best to get rid of
    the micro-optimization of re-using the input list cells.  Just build
    a new list.
    
    Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/16912.1515449066@sss.pgh.pa.us
    3cb1b2a8
list.c 27.8 KB