On Oct10, 2011, at 19:41 , Jeff Davis wrote: > On Mon, 2011-10-10 at 19:22 +0200, Florian Pflug wrote: >> I still think we should strive for consistency here, so let's also make >> '[]' the default flags for the range constructors. > > For continuous ranges I don't think that's a good idea. Closed-open is a > very widely-accepted convention and there are good reasons for it -- for > instance, it's good for specifying contiguous-but-non-overlapping > ranges.
It really depends on what you're using ranges for. Yeah, if you're "convering" something with ranges (like mapping things to a certain period of time, or an area of space), then half-open ranges are probably very common. If, OTOH, you're storing measurement with error margins, then open ranges, i.e. '()', are probably what you want. I still firmly believe that consistency trumps convenience here. Specifying the range boundaries' exclusivity/inclusivity explicitly is quite cheap... > So, I think we either need to standardize on '[)' or allow different > default_flags for different types. Or, always specify the inclusivity in > the constructor (hopefully in a convenient way). In the light of Tom's argument, my pick would be '[]'. It's seem strange to normalize ranges over discrete types to closed ranges, yet make the construction function expect open boundaries by default. best regards, Florian Pflug -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
