Re: WIP: to_char, support for EEEE format

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Pavel Stehule<pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> 2009/7/30 Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>:
>> Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>> 2009/7/30 Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>:
>>>> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Brendan Jurd<direvus(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>>>> Hmm. For what it's worth, I think Pavel makes a good point about the
>>>>> number of exponent digits -- a large chunk of the use case for numeric
>>>>> formatting would be fixed-width reporting.
>>
>> +1.  If you aren't trying to get the format exactly so, it's not clear
>> why you're bothering with to_char() at all.
>>
>>> Maybe we should to support some modificator like Large EEEE - LEEEE or EEEEE
>>
>> Five (or more?) E's seems like a natural extension to me.  However, that
>> still leaves us with the question of what to do when the exponent
>> doesn't fit in however many digits we'd like to print.  Seems like the
>> options are
>>        * print #'s
>>        * force the output wider
>>        * throw an error
>> None of these are very nice, but the first two could cause problems that
>> you don't find out until it's too late to fix.  What about throwing an
>> error?
>
> I thing, so Oracle raise error. But I don't thing, so it is necessary
> repeat all Oracle the behave - mainly when is maybe not too much
> practical.
>
> * print #s, and force the output wider has one disadvantage - it
> cannot put clean signal about data problem in development time, maybe
> we should to add raise warning.
>
> * throw an error should to break "bad" written application in
> production, when is too late too. So anybody should have not complete
> test data set and there are a problem.
>
> I prefer print # with raising an warning.

It seems like the discussion here has kind of died. We need to settle
on an approach and get a final patch soon, or else defer this until
next CommitFest.

...Robert