Feedback-ID: ia2694551:Fastmail
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 17:42:54 +0100
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Eric Hanson <eric@aquameta.com>,
	Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>, pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: "name" vs "alias" in datatype table
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On 2023-Nov-29, Tom Lane wrote:

> Eric Hanson <eric@aquameta.com> writes:
> > The larger point being, the "name" vs "alias" paradigm presented in this
> > table does not accurately represent PostgreSQL, and conveys an inaccurate
> > picture of the relationship between type names.  int4 is not an "alias".
> 
> I agree that this could be improved, mainly because it's far from
> clear what the internal name of each type is (and there's at least
> one case where the internal name is not shown at all).

Maybe we could split this into multiple *tables*.  The main one would be
what we already have except the aliases column is removed, and serial
types removed; the second table would list serial pseudo-types, without
aliases; the third one would have unofficial names (internal names and
other aliases) for types listed in the other two.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera               48°01'N 7°57'E  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"The ability of users to misuse tools is, of course, legendary" (David Steele)
https://postgr.es/m/11b38a96-6ded-4668-b772-40f992132797@pgmasters.net