Subject: wrong information about unlimied size of text field?

From: Hubert depesz Lubaczewski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:56:55 +0200

hi
according to what i know, where is a limit for up to 2gigabytes of data
in text fields (according to c.h).
this limit is of course very big, but i belive it should be mentioned in
datatype.sgml instead of saying:

<entry><type>text</type></entry>
<entry>Variable unlimited length</entry>

if this is not the case, i'd like some information how longer text's can
be stored, when text is internally of "varlena" type, where
varlena.vl_len is of int32 type.

best regards

depesz

-- 
hubert depesz lubaczewski                          http://www.depesz.pl/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mój Boże, spraw abym milczał, dopóki się nie upewnię,  że  naprawdę  mam
coś do powiedzenia.                                      (c) 1998 depesz

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From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:53:05 -0400 (EDT)

Current FAQ on web site lists limit as 1GB.  I think I fixed that only recently.

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Hubert depesz Lubaczewski wrote:
-- Start of PGP signed section.
> M?j Bo?e, spraw abym milcza?, dop?ki si? nie upewni?,  ?e  naprawd?  mam
> co? do powiedzenia.                                      (c) 1998 depesz
> 
-- End of PGP section, PGP failed!

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [email-masked]               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 20:55:37 +0200 (CEST)

> datatype.sgml instead of saying:

If you continue reading you will find

    The storage requirement for data of these types is 4 bytes plus
    the actual string, and in case of <type>character</type> plus the
    padding.  Long strings will be compressed by the system
    automatically, so the physical requirement on disk may be less.
    In any case, the longest possible character string
    that can be stored is about 1 GB.  (The maximum value that will be
    allowed for <replaceable>n</> in the data type declaration is
    less than that.  It wouldn't be very useful to change
    this because with multibyte character encodings the number of
    characters and bytes can be quite different anyway.  If you desire
    to store long strings with no specific upper limit, use <type>text</type>
    or <type>character varying</type> without a length specifier,
    rather than making up an arbitrary length limit.)

which seems to be the information you are looking for.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   [email-masked]

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From: Hubert depesz Lubaczewski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 18:50:03 +0200

> which seems to be the information you are looking for.

o.k. now i know it for sure. but what about others who just stumble on
"unlimited length", and just *dont* read further? why put such a false
statement in our docs?

depesz