Cleaning up cross-type arithmetic operators

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org
Subject: Cleaning up cross-type arithmetic operators
Date: 2008-06-17 17:29:56
Message-ID: 23982.1213723796@sss.pgh.pa.us
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There was a discussion back here:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2008-01/msg00189.php
that came to the conclusion that cross-type operators are a bad idea
if they don't come in complete sets: if you don't have an exact match
to the input types, and there are multiple possible candidates, then
the system doesn't know what to pick.

I looked through pg_operator just now, and found that we seem to be okay
as far as comparison operators go, but we do have issues for basic
arithmetic operators. Specifically, these cross-type operators aren't
part of complete sets:

OID | OPERATOR

548 | % (smallint,integer)
549 | % (integer,smallint)

690 | * (bigint,integer)
544 | * (smallint,integer)
694 | * (integer,bigint)
545 | * (integer,smallint)

688 | + (bigint,integer)
552 | + (smallint,integer)
692 | + (integer,bigint)
553 | + (integer,smallint)

689 | - (bigint,integer)
556 | - (smallint,integer)
693 | - (integer,bigint)
557 | - (integer,smallint)

691 | / (bigint,integer)
546 | / (smallint,integer)
695 | / (integer,bigint)
547 | / (integer,smallint)

We could either remove all of these, or fill in the sets. Removal
would mean that cross-type cases would get implemented as a coercion
function feeding a single-data-type operator, which would be marginally
slower to execute (I'm not sure it would be significant).

What I'm inclined to do is remove the two % operators, which don't seem
likely to be performance-critical, and fill in the missing int2-vs-int8
cases for the four basic arithmetic operators. But I could be talked
into just nuking everything listed above (and their underlying functions
of course).

Comments?

regards, tom lane

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