> Actually, the original argument for negative attno's for dropped columns > was exactly for this case, that the system column check would catch > dropped columns too, but it causes other problems that are harder to fix > so we _dropped_ the idea.
Well, negative attnums are a good idea and yes, you sort of avoid all these problems. However, the backend is _full_ of stuff like this: if (attnum < 0) elog(ERROR, "Cannot footle system attribute."); But the problem is that we'd have to change all of them anyway in a negative attnum implementation, since they're not system attributes, they're dropped columns. But let's not start another thread about this!! Chris ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster