"Dann Corbit" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Surely, we cannot be the only people who will need this information. If > (for example) someone wants to bind to a grid, then the maximum size has > to be known in advance.
In fact psql needs it and implements this. It has to skim through the entire result set to calculate the column widths. It's quite a lot of work but the server is in no better position to do it than psql. On the contrary the server is missing quite a bit of information of how you intend to display the information. Do you need the number of bytes or characters? Are all the characters the same width in your display system? What about currency symbols? Do you intend to reverse any quoting or just display backslashes? Even knowing how many characters and assuming fixed character widths that wouldn't even be enough to set your grid control widths. Usually people like numeric quantities decimal aligned and so two records "1.00" and "0.01" will take much more width than two records with "1.00" and "2.00". -- Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
