Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 13:10:58 -0600
From: Michael Fuhr <mike@fuhr.org>
To: Matthew Peter <survivedsushi@yahoo.com>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: delete item[5] from varchar[] array???
Message-ID: <20050923191057.GA81954@winnie.fuhr.org>
References: <20050922031511.GB90260@winnie.fuhr.org>
	<20050923170244.72178.qmail@web35206.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 10:02:44AM -0700, Matthew Peter wrote:
> --- Michael Fuhr <mike@fuhr.org> wrote:
> > test=> UPDATE foo SET a = a[1:3] || a[5:6];
>
> I sure hope there is a better way :) There must be an
> easy, native way to interface with arrays.

Hoping a thing is true doesn't mean it must be true :-)

> We all know programming languages have ways to delete items in an
> array natively, it just needs to be exposed.

No, we don't all know that because it isn't generally true, or else
you're using a loose definition of "natively."  Languages differ
in what capabilities they offer "natively."

contrib/intarray implements an intarray_del_elem() function,
presumably because the core product doesn't offer that capability,
or at least didn't when the module was written.  If you think it's
there just waiting to be exposed, then dig into the source code and
expose it :-)

-- 
Michael Fuhr