Re: Single-argument variant for array_length and friends?

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 2:00 AM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> 2013/3/21 Brendan Jurd <direvus(at)gmail(dot)com>:
>> On 21 March 2013 17:32, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>> If I though about it more, I like to more limit one parametric
>>> array_length function just for only 1D array. So it is your A use
>>> case. But I understand so this variant is not orthogonal. Hard to say,
>>> what is better.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, for me (a) is running a very close 2nd place to (c). The
>> strength of (a) is it means we aren't making guesses about the user's
>> intention. When a user concocts an expression that is ambiguous, I
>> feel it is usually good to kick it back to them and ask them to be
>> more precise.
>>
>> On the other hand, I find it very natural to interpret "what is the
>> length of my multidim array" to mean "what is the length of the
>> outermost dimension of my multidim array", because to me a multidim
>> array is just an array that contains more arrays.
>
> lot of postgresql functions calculate with all items in array without
> respect to dimensions - like unnest.
>
> so concept "use outermost dim" is not in pg now, and should not be
> introduced if it is possible. More it goes against a verbosity concept
> introduced by ADA and reused in PL/SQL and PL/pgSQL.

and pl/psm*

merlin