X-Original-To: pgsql-sql-postgresql.org@localhost.postgresql.org Received: from localhost (unknown [64.117.224.130]) by svr1.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9EA75D1C90F for ; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 18:38:05 +0000 (GMT) Received: from svr1.postgresql.org ([64.117.224.193]) by localhost (neptune.hub.org [64.117.224.130]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 61290-07 for ; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 15:37:20 -0300 (ADT) Received: from sabre.velocet.net (sabre.velocet.net [216.138.209.205]) by svr1.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CC173D1C90E for ; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 15:38:03 -0300 (ADT) Received: from stark.dyndns.tv (H162.C233.tor.velocet.net [216.138.233.162]) by sabre.velocet.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id AB09C139D16; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 14:35:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=stark.dyndns.tv ident=foobar) by stark.dyndns.tv with smtp (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 19fkwN-00079U-00; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 14:35:47 -0400 To: Tom Lane Cc: Bruce Momjian , Stephan Szabo , Jean-Luc Lachance , "Michael S. Tibbetts" , pgsql-sql@postgresql.org Subject: Re: min() and NaN References: <200307221859.h6MIxJk11503@candle.pha.pa.us> <15160.1058902399@sss.pgh.pa.us> In-Reply-To: <15160.1058902399@sss.pgh.pa.us> From: Greg Stark Organization: The Emacs Conspiracy; member since 1992 Date: 24 Jul 2003 14:35:46 -0400 Message-ID: <87u19bojr1.fsf@stark.dyndns.tv> Lines: 14 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at postgresql.org X-Archive-Number: 200307/365 X-Sequence-Number: 14479 Tom Lane writes: > NULL can be special, because it acts specially in comparisons anyway. > But NaN is just a value of the datatype. Does postgres intend to support all the different types of NaN? Does you intend to have +Inf and -Inf and underflow detection and all the other goodies you actually need to make it useful? If not it seems more useful to just use the handy unknown-value thing SQL already has and turn NaN into a NULL. -- greg