Fixed-width types (was: Enum proposal / design)

On Thu, Aug 17, 2006 at 01:42:20PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> > Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> >> If there was a mechanism to obtain
> >> field widths from the catalog there would be no need to store the
> >> field width in each tuple. This would be useful for other types as
> >> well (UUID and ENUM, for example).
>
> > I don't think there is concensus on adding that.

I seem to recall it coming up a few times in recent history, but
consider this a call for people to "+1" it.

> Well, it's pie-in-the-sky at the moment because we have no credible
> design for doing it. Whether any given proposal would get accepted
> would depend on what its downsides were.
>
> Do we (or should we) have a TODO section for "blue sky research
> ideas"? I'd not object to putting an item like this in such a
> section. But for most of the TODO items we have a reasonably clear
> idea of what we're talking about, so this doesn't seem to belong
> in with the rest.

It seems what's desired is fairly clear (even if my proposed TODO
wasn't)... have a means for types that do not contain varlena info but
aren't pre-compiled to a fixed width like int is.

Of course, how to do it is a whole different story. I thought that there
was precident for putting items like that on the TODO, but maybe not.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461