public inbox for [email protected]  

help / color / mirror / Atom feed

From: Thom Brown <[email protected]>
To: Tom Lane <[email protected]>
Cc: pgsql-docs <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Functions example results incorrect
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 19:33:18 +0100
Message-ID: <[email protected]> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
	<[email protected]>

On 1 July 2011 19:17, Tom Lane <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thom Brown <[email protected]> writes:
>> It says that exp(1.0) yields 2.71828182845905.
>
> exp(1.0) invokes numeric exp() these days, but when the examples were
> written, it would have invoked float8 exp().  At least on my machine,
> float8 does give the cited results
>
> Not sure if we want to change the examples or not.  As per the comment
> above the table, these results are inherently a bit platform-dependent,
> so someone who is expecting to match the results exactly is likely to be
> disappointed anyhow.

Fair enough.

>> The quote literal example of quote_literal('O\'Reilly') doesn't work
>> on my installation by default.
>
> Hmm, should we use an E'' literal there, or change the input to be
> 'O''Reilly'?  The former would confuse people who didn't understand E''
> literals, while the latter would make it look like quote_literal wasn't
> doing anything at all, so neither alternative seems to offer much
> clarity.

My concern is that people copying the example as a way to quote their
string literal will find that, by default, it doesn't work.  I'll
leave it to your better judgement though as I can see that the E''
notation could potentially confuse.   It is possible, either way, to
add a footnote to the example?

-- 
Thom Brown
Twitter: @darkixion
IRC (freenode): dark_ixion
Registered Linux user: #516935

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

view thread (8+ messages)  latest in thread

reply

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Reply to all the recipients using the --to and --cc options:
  reply via email

  To: [email protected]
  Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
  Subject: Re: Functions example results incorrect
  In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

This inbox is served by agora; see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox