Richard Huxton wrote:
Dann Corbit wrote:
I can see plenty of harm and absolutely no return. We are talking about
blank padding before comparison. Do you really want 'Danniel '
considered distinct from 'Danniel ' in a comparison? In real life,
what does that buy you?
100% YES!
If two values are the same, then any function on those two values should
return the same result. Otherwise what does "equals" mean? At the very
least length() is broken by your argument.
I agree completely. I would much rather be precise than intuitive. And,
I have done applications where the padding length was important,
especially when working with remote batch processing in the credit
industries and the like. Writing queries to create and process
fixed-width batch files is much easier if you can rely on these kinds of
behaviors.
Here it's CHAR that's broken IMHO - spawn of some punch-card spawned
data processing rules of the 70s.
--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives?
http://archives.postgresql.org
