Brendan Jurd <dire...@gmail.com> writes: > For example, you're trying to import a date that is written as "Wed > 3rd March, Q1 2010". You might give to_date a format string like 'Dy > FMDDTH Month, "Q"Q YYYY' and expect to get the correct answer. If we > start throwing an error on the Q field, then users would have to > resort to some strange circumlocution to get around it.
Hmm. That's an interesting test case: if Q throws an error, there doesn't seem to be any way to do it at all, because there is no format spec for ignoring non-constant text. Conversely, Bruce's proposed patch would actually break it, because the Q code would overwrite the (correct) month information with the first-month-of-the-quarter. So at the moment my vote is "leave it alone". If we want to throw error for Q then we should provide a substitute method of ignoring a field. But we could just document Q as ignoring an integer for input. 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