I wrote: > Bruce suggested what seemed like an excellent idea, which is to make > this self-documenting using the new default-arguments feature --- > it'll look something like this in \df:
> List of functions > Schema | Name | Result data type | Argument data types > --------+------+------------------+---------------------------------------- > public | foo | integer | label text, fast boolean DEFAULT false On poking into this, it's a bit uglier to do than I first thought. pg_proc.proargdefaults has to be the text representation of an expression tree. This means that to do it directly in pg_proc.h would take writing something like ({CONST :consttype 16 :consttypmod -1 :constlen 1 :constbyval true :constisnull false :location -1 :constvalue 1 [ 0 0 0 0 ]}) Ugly as that is, it gets worse fast: the constvalue representation is machine-dependent, both as to width and endianness. And maintaining such things in the face of expression tree changes would be no fun either. So I think that's out. The only alternative that comes to mind is to have initdb issue an additional SQL command to establish the default after the bootstrap phase; that is, something like CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pg_start_backup(label text, fast boolean DEFAULT false) RETURNS text LANGUAGE internal STRICT AS 'start_backup'; in system_views.sql or some such place. Or we could just not bother with using a default here (ie, go back to declaring two pg_proc entries). It's not buying us all that much. Comments? regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers