• Peter Eisentraut's avatar
    Change return type of EXTRACT to numeric · a2da77cd
    Peter Eisentraut authored
    The previous implementation of EXTRACT mapped internally to
    date_part(), which returned type double precision (since it was
    implemented long before the numeric type existed).  This can lead to
    imprecise output in some cases, so returning numeric would be
    preferrable.  Changing the return type of an existing function is a
    bit risky, so instead we do the following:  We implement a new set of
    functions, which are now called "extract", in parallel to the existing
    date_part functions.  They work the same way internally but use
    numeric instead of float8.  The EXTRACT construct is now mapped by the
    parser to these new extract functions.  That way, dumps of views
    etc. from old versions (which would use date_part) continue to work
    unchanged, but new uses will map to the new extract functions.
    
    Additionally, the reverse compilation of EXTRACT now reproduces the
    original syntax, using the new mechanism introduced in
    40c24bfe.
    
    The following minor changes of behavior result from the new
    implementation:
    
    - The column name from an isolated EXTRACT call is now "extract"
      instead of "date_part".
    
    - Extract from date now rejects inappropriate field names such as
      HOUR.  It was previously mapped internally to extract from
      timestamp, so it would silently accept everything appropriate for
      timestamp.
    
    - Return values when extracting fields with possibly fractional
      values, such as second and epoch, now have the full scale that the
      value has internally (so, for example, '1.000000' instead of just
      '1').
    Reported-by: default avatarPetr Fedorov <petr.fedorov@phystech.edu>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarTom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
    Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/42b73d2d-da12-ba9f-570a-420e0cce19d9@phystech.edu
    a2da77cd
catversion.h 2.53 KB