Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2021 23:13:29 -0700
From: Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com>
To: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, neverov.max@gmail.com,
	pgsql-bugs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: BUG #16939: Plural interval for negative singular
Message-ID: <20210427061329.GB2435607@rfd.leadboat.com>
References: <16939-cceeb03fb72736ee@postgresql.org>
 <20210323160336.GE579@momjian.us>
 <20210425115726.GA2353095@rfd.leadboat.com>
 <20210426163116.GR7629@momjian.us>
 <2266336.1619455534@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <20210426165435.GT7629@momjian.us>
 <2267469.1619456564@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <20210426170616.GV7629@momjian.us>
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On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 01:06:16PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 01:02:44PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> > Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > > On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 12:45:34PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> > >> I agree with Noah's opinion that we should stick to the historical
> > >> behavior in the interval I/O functions.  There is not enough solidity
> > >> in the "this is grammatically wrong" argument to justify taking any
> > >> risk of application breakage, and it seems like there is some risk of
> > >> that there.
> > 
> > > Are you saying we should revert the patch and leave the plurals
> > > inconsistent in different places?  We were already expressing -1 as
> > > singular in most of the places I saw.

Which places did you find?  I used the following to check for code like you
were adding, but it probably missed things:

$ git grep '"s"' 5da9868^ | grep abs
5da9868^:src/backend/utils/adt/datetime.c:						(abs(sec) != 1 || fsec != 0) ? "s" : "");
5da9868^:src/interfaces/ecpg/pgtypeslib/interval.c:						(abs(sec) != 1 || fsec != 0) ? "s" : "");

> > As far as the changes in datetime.c and interval.c are concerned,
> > yes.  I don't care too much about what you did in fe-print.c,
> 
> Well, we should then add a comment that this is inconsistent but should
> not be changed.

No objection to having a comment.