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From: Tom Lane <[email protected]>
To: Jürgen Purtz <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Math function description issue
Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 16:11:13 -0400
Message-ID: <[email protected]> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
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=?UTF-8?Q?J=c3=bcrgen_Purtz?= <[email protected]> writes:
> The standard says:
> "<ceiling function> computes the least integer greater than or equal to 
> its argument."

Hmm, you're looking at the SQL standard I guess.  The existing wording
in our docs seems to be taken from the C/POSIX standard, which says
"[ceil(x)] shall compute the smallest integral value not less than x".

> a) In my opinion this wording is easier to understand because it avoids 
> the negation via "not less".

That's a fair point.

The other difference is least/greatest versus smallest/largest.  I'm not
sure if using least/greatest would help the people who misunderstand
"smallest" as "closest to zero".  They might; but being less-common words,
they might also confuse people whose native language isn't English.
Anyone have an opinion about which to use?

> b) To dispel the ambiguities concerning what is greater or lesser (with 
> negative numbers) we may add a second example with +42.8 and an 
> additional comment - something like: "Please consider the situation with 
> negative numbers: -42 is greater than -43".

I'm not terribly excited about that, and even if I were, there doesn't
seem to be a good way to shoehorn multiple examples into one entry in
these tables.

			regards, tom lane


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