Feedback-ID: ia2694551:Fastmail
Date: Mon, 6 May 2024 10:53:50 +0200
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
To: David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com>
Cc: Erik Wienhold <ewie@ewie.name>,
	Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>, pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: nchar is undocumented
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On 2024-May-05, David Rowley wrote:

> On Sun, 5 May 2024 at 12:41, Erik Wienhold <ewie@ewie.name> wrote:
> > So, I think we should either remove that one nchar instance (because it
> > doesn't add any real value) or document it properly.  The attached patch
> > does the latter.
> 
> It seems easier to do the former, that way we don't need to reconsider
> Peter's concerns about not having enough confidence that it matches
> the standard.
> 
> I've included Alvaro and Peter to see what they think.

Yeah, I too am inclined to remove it.  This text was initially written
by Mantrova, Bartunov and Glukhov and posted in [1] without further
explanation, from where it was copied by Glukhov into [2]; the one I
committed is a direct derivate from that.  There was no discussion about
nchar specifically that I can see, and at least I simply failed to
realize that nchar was not something that we talk about.

I'll remove it from the list, and backpatch to 16.

[1] https://postgr.es/m/732208d3-56c3-25a4-8f08-3be1d54ad51b@postgrespro.ru
[2] https://postgr.es/m/8c1ba295-fa42-d4f2-a155-76cf3327d07c@postgrespro.ru
%

If you, Erik, want to spend some time thinking through the standard
definition of NCHAR and whether we conform, perhaps we can document it
more fully.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera               48°01'N 7°57'E  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"Java is clearly an example of money oriented programming"  (A. Stepanov)