From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>
cc: Arthur Zakirov <zaartur@gmail.com>,
        Juan =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9_Santamar=EDa?= Flecha
 <juanjo.santamaria@gmail.com>,
        Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>,
        PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Allow to_date() and to_timestamp() to accept localized names
In-reply-to: <20200123164955.GA23074@alvherre.pgsql>
References: <20200123164955.GA23074@alvherre.pgsql>
Comments: In-reply-to Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>
	message dated "Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:49:55 -0300"
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Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2020 12:53:16 -0500
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Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> Even whitespace is problematic for some languages, such as Afan,

> mon      "Qunxa Garablu";/
>          "Naharsi Kudo";/
>          "Ciggilta Kudo";/

> (etc) but I think whitespace-splitting is going to be more comprehensible
> in the vast majority of cases, even if not perfect.

Interesting.  Given that to_date et al are often willing to ignore
whitespace in input, I wonder whether we won't have some other issues
with names like that --- not so much that basic cases wouldn't work,
as that people might reasonably expect that, say, we'd be flexible
about the amount of whitespace.  Seems like a problem for another day
though.

In the meantime, I agree that "truncate at whitespace" is a better
heuristic for the error messages than what we've got.  I'll go make it so.

			regards, tom lane