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Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2011 16:29:16 -0700
From: David Fetter <david@fetter.org>
To: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Cc: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>,
	Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov>, Thom Brown <thom@linux.com>,
	PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Couple document fixes
Message-ID: <20110905232916.GK3924@fetter.org>
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	<201109051821.p85ILkQ01814@momjian.us>
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On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 02:21:46PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > Removing CC to pg-docs so that Robert reads it.
> > 
> > Excerpts from Bruce Momjian's message of vie mar 11 08:13:20 -0300 2011:
> > > Kevin Grittner wrote:
> > 
> > > > relpersistence should be <type>"char"</type>, not
> > > > <type>char</type>.  Oddly enough, there is a difference.
> > > 
> > > I am unsure on that one.  We have many 'char' mentions in
> > > catalog.sgml, and I don't see any of them shown as '"char"'.
> > > (Wow, we should have just called this type char1, but I think
> > > that name came from Berkeley!) The big problem is that the
> > > pg_type name is really "char" _without_ quotes.
> > 
> > One idea is to rename the type to something else.  We could keep
> > "char" as an alias for backwards compatibility, but use the new
> > name in system catalogs, and document it as the main name of the
> > type.
> > 
> > Discussed the idea a bit on IM with Bruce, but couldn't find any
> > really good alternative.  Idea floated so far:
> > 
> > * byte (seems pretty decent to me) * octet (though maybe people
> > would expect it'd output as a number) * char1 (looks ugly, but
> > then we have int4 and so on) * achar (this one is just plain
> > weird)
> > 
> > None seems great.  Thoughts?
> 
> Any new ideas on how to document our "char" data type?

What say we document it as deprecated and remove the silly thing over
the next three releases or so?  It's deep in the realm of
micro-optimization, and of a kind we well and truly don't need any
more, assuming we ever did.

Alternate proposals would involve a more aggressive deprecation and
removal schedule. ;)

Cheers,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
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