Re: [HACKERS] Array assignment behavior (was Re: [ADMIN] Stored procedure array

[Paul B. Anderson]

It seems that the suggestion to fill intermediate positions with NULLs would be preferable to the current behavior.  I know of no requirement to populate arrays in sequence in any other language so I think other programmers would be surprised too by the current behavior. Paul Tom Lane wrote: [ expanding this thread, as it now needs wider discussion ] "Paul B. Anderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Actually, I was not filling all of the arrays in sequential order. I added code to initialize them in order and the function seems to be working now. Is that a known problem? Well, it's a documented behavior: section 8.10.4 saith A stored array value can be enlarged by assigning to an element adjacent to those already present, or by assigning to a slice that is adjacent to or overlaps the data already present. Up to 8.2 we didn't have a lot of choice about this, because without any ability to have nulls embedded in arrays, there wasn't any sane thing to do with the intermediate positions if you assigned to an element not adjacent to the existing range. As of 8.2 we could allow assignment to arbitrary positions by filling the intermediate positions with nulls. The code hasn't actually been changed to allow that, but it's something we could consider doing now. Comments? regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match .