Tom Lane wrote:
How about introducing a "varchar2" type as in Oracle?
Maybe. I think right now we don't allow input functions to decide
that a non-null input string should be converted to a NULL, but
that might be fixable. It'd still be an ugly mess though, since
I suspect you'd have to introduce a whole structure of varchar2
functions/operators paralleling text. For example, what is Oracle's
handling of || ? AFAICS they can't be standards compliant there,
which means you need a varchar2-specific nonstrict implementation
of ||, and then to make that work the way Oracle users would expect,
varchar2-ness rather than text-ness would have to propagate through
anything else that might be done to a column before it reaches the ||.
Curiously enough, Oracle has it so that || of null arguments treats the
arguments as empty string.
It's beyond comprehension.
But yeah, a varchar2 type with a full set of functions and operators
could work. If you choose not to bother with supporting the char type.
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