Tom,
It was changed to support partial-match tsvector queries. Without it, a partial match query would have to scan entire tsvectors instead of applying binary search. I don't know if Oleg and Teodor did any actual performance tests on the size of the hit, but it seems like it could be pretty awful for large documents.
Ah, ok, that's pretty significant. It makes a huge difference for some users, one of whom will be quoted on the press release.
-- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
