Re: to_char and i18n

[Gavin Sherry <swm(at)linuxworld(dot)com(dot)au>]

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005, Tom Lane wrote:

> Manuel Sugawara <masm(at)fciencias(dot)unam(dot)mx> writes:
> > (Some time ago I proposed an--incomplete--patch and it was rejectd by
> > Karel arguing that to_char functions should behave *exactly* the same
> > way that they do in Oracle.)
>
> That is the accepted plan for to_char ... of course, if Oracle changes
> to_char every so often, it'll get more interesting to decide what to do.

There's some functionality in 10g which PostgreSQL does not have:

TZD - returns the short timezone string with daylight saving information,
eg: PDT

TZM - timezone offset minutes part

TZH - timezone offset hours part

TZR -  timezone region (US/Pacific, for example)

RR/RRRR - accept 'rounded' years, eg 99-1-1 = 1999-1-1 (kind of pointless)

FF - specify how many digits to the right of the decimal place to display,
when looking at factions of seconds. Eg: HH:MM:SS.FF3 would produce
15:56:22.123

X - the local radix character. Eg: HH:MM:SSXFF would produce 15:56:22.123

E - Era name (like, Japanese Imperial) (kind of pointless)
EE - Full era name

DS - Locale formatted short date. For example, DD/MM/YYYY for the Brits,
MM/DD/YYYY for the Yanks

DL - Locale formatted long date. Eg: fmDay, dd. Month yyyy in Germany

SCC - Like 'CC', but will carry a - (minus) for BC dates (I'm not sure if
this implies that Oracle wants BC dates to be marked 'BC'. I don't have
an Oracle system around at the moment to check though :-()

TS - Locale formatted short time.

YEAR - Year in words

SYEAR - Year in words, prefixed by minus sign for BC dates

SYYYY - YYYY, prefixed by minus sign for BC dates

Gavin