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help / color / mirror / Atom feedFrom: David G. Johnston <[email protected]>
To: Jeff Davis <[email protected]>
Cc: Sergei Katkovsky <[email protected]>
Cc: Tom Lane <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: BPCHAR description in 8.3. Character Types is misleading and incomplete
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2025 14:40:36 -0400
Message-ID: <CAKFQuwb8Qh2akZKV-yieee-rdVQ0-faZRAzxVvbfw2SdKACXaA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
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On Thursday, October 16, 2025, Jeff Davis <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, 2025-10-16 at 08:36 -0400, David G. Johnston wrote:
> > A given value has a finite length and there is just no restriction on
> > what that length is. All trailing spaces in the input are considered
> > padding for purposes of comparison i.e., manually padding is added by
> > the user as opposed to the system.
>
> I see -- so it means that the padding came from somewhere else (not the
> type).
>
Yeah, your original conclusion this couldn’t be labeled blank-padded seems
to have drawn this confusion. If padding is indeed noun-like and not
verb-like then calling it blank-padded works ok. The clarifying text is
then just fine as-is: the comment about any included spaces are
semantically insignificant ties back to calling those spaces “padding” and
thus the type itself remains “blank-padded” in both the and N and non-N
cases. There isn’t a way to make “trimmed” a noun here but those spaces
are not actually removed/trimmed away.
In short, I would change trimmed to padded in the table.
I’d also add “padding” here just to actually use the word in its noun form.
…but trailing spaces are [stored as] semantically insignificant [padding].
(I thought also about trying to remove the phrase “semantically
[in]significant” altogether but at the moment would rather not touch the
following paragraph.)
If we really have to drive the point home I'd also add a footnote marker to
“blank-padded” and then say in the footnote text (right below the table):
A blank-padded value contains zero or more trailing spaces which are
ignored for comparison purposes. These spaces are also called
“semantically insignificant”.
David J.
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To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: BPCHAR description in 8.3. Character Types is misleading and incomplete
In-Reply-To: <CAKFQuwb8Qh2akZKV-yieee-rdVQ0-faZRAzxVvbfw2SdKACXaA@mail.gmail.com>
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