Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2026 01:24:34 +0100
From: Erik Wienhold <ewie@ewie.name>
To: Hoda Salim <hoda.s.salim@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] docs: document N'...' national character string literal
 syntax
Message-ID: <f88306cc-1cd9-4727-ab94-5b8bcdb89b11@ewie.name>
References: 
 <CAAGT0iKc1Fq=mmK99fMd8O+QGZfCAqzx3bOWBcci6fO8SjLGtQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <b31e1ee9-3bc9-43db-9f7c-ac0459c0570d@ewie.name>
 <CAAGT0i+SrExi4LVf-gQ4t9XY724pVRxEvOZft4B0uUs-gDuYHA@mail.gmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: 
 <CAAGT0i+SrExi4LVf-gQ4t9XY724pVRxEvOZft4B0uUs-gDuYHA@mail.gmail.com>
Archived-At: 
 <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/f88306cc-1cd9-4727-ab94-5b8bcdb89b11%40ewie.name>
Precedence: bulk

On 2026-02-02 21:04 +0100, Hoda Salim wrote:
> > nchar is an alias of bpchar.  There's no cast to char behind the scenes
> > since that would truncate the string:
> >
> >         select n'foo', 'foo'::character;
> >          bpchar | bpchar
> >         --------+--------
> >          foo    | f
> >         (1 row)
> 
> Thank you for catching this! I verified the behavior and updated the
> documentation to correctly state that N'...' is equivalent to a bpchar
> literal.

Thanks!  The text looks good now.  But please fix the indentation of the
second paragraph (should be one space per level).  Your first patch was
correct in that regard.

> > Should we also mention the nchar alias in [4]?
> > [4] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/datatype-character.html
> 
> I'm happy to add that in a v3 if you think it belongs in this patch.
> I wasn't sure if it would be preferred separately or together.

I'd prefer a single patch with both changes to have an atomic change.
But in the end it's up to the committer, not me.

--
Erik Wienhold