Re: array_length(anyarray)

On 1/9/14 5:44 PM, Florian Pflug wrote:
> On Jan9, 2014, at 14:57 , Dean Rasheed <dean(dot)a(dot)rasheed(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> On 19 December 2013 08:05, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>> length should be irrelevant to fact so array starts from 1, 0 or anything
>>> else
>>
>> Yes, this should just return the number of elements, and 0 for an empty array.
>
> +1. Anything that complains about arrays whose lower bound isn't 1 really
> needs a *way* less generic name than array_length().

Problem is, if you're operating on an array which could have a lower
bound that isn't 1, why would you look at the length in the first place?
You can't access any elements by index, you'd need to look at
array_lower(). You can't iterate over the array by index, you'd need to
do array_lower() .. array_lower() + array_length(), which doesn't make
sense. And then there's the myriad of stuff you can do with unnest()
without actually having to look at the length. Same goes for
multi-dimensional arrays: you have even less things you can do there
with only a length.

So if we give up these constraints, we also make this function
completely useless.

Regards,
Marko Tiikkaja