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From: Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz@postgresql.org>
To: David Harper <adh@sanger.ac.uk>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Cc: pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Ambiguous language in Table 8.13. Special Date/Time Inputs [EXT]
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 13:32:31 -0400
Message-ID: <74c7b4d4-5c0c-29a2-89aa-9395a38e0633@postgresql.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1DC28BBD-A4B8-4083-AC83-BD5B012FF3B1@sanger.ac.uk>
References: <156258047907.1181.11324468080514061996@wrigleys.postgresql.org>
	<20190709033234.ytbltfn25h5wvdbd@momjian.us>
	<8B4735A4-7B46-406A-B4F1-CBFA47D5E1BC@sanger.ac.uk>
	<20190709154825.egarmx2s5jyvft4e@momjian.us>
	<25367.1562687915@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<1DC28BBD-A4B8-4083-AC83-BD5B012FF3B1@sanger.ac.uk>

On 7/10/19 6:13 AM, David Harper wrote:
>> I actually agree with your opinion that "midnight" is fine.
>> That text has been that way for over fifteen years[1], and
>> nobody's complained before that it was ambiguous.
> 
> Conversely, how many users over the past fifteen years have read that table, and then felt compelled (as I did) to run a query such as
> 
>   select 'today'::timestamp,'yesterday'::timestamp,'tomorrow'::timestamp;
> 
> on their PostgreSQL cluster to clear the ambiguity for themselves?

I've heard of one, but only just recently :)

If we were to s/midnight/00:00:00/ we'd probably want to do it
everywhere midnight appears. This occurs in a few places in the docs:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-formatting.html (SSSS)
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/protocol-replication.html
(XlogData section)

and there are some various code comments as well.

Count me as a +0 vote, as I've always interpreted it the way Bruce & Tom
said upthread, but if we want to change it I can write a patch.

Jonathan

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  Subject: Re: Ambiguous language in Table 8.13. Special Date/Time Inputs [EXT]
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