Re: Disallow arrays with non-standard lower bounds

Gavin Flower <GavinFlower(at)archidevsys(dot)co(dot)nz> wrote:

> Starting arrays at zero makes the most sense, as then you can
> calculate the displacement simply as (index) * (size of entry),
> and not have subtract one from the index first.  This would be my
> preference.

The SQL standard explicitly specifies that arrays positions range
from 1 to the cardinality of the array, with individual elements
referenced by position.  When implementing a language for which
there is an international standard, my preference is to conform to
the standard.

I don't have a problem with extensions to the language, and a
variable low bound is workable as an extension as long as the
standard ways to create an array default to a low bound of 1.

A bigger problem with our array implementation is that is is really
a multidimensional matrix, rather than an array which can contain
nested arrays.  That is both non-standard and limiting.

That said, I think it would be nice to have better support for
arrays defined with a single dimension and a low bound of 1, as the
standard requires.  Functions which throw an error when passed a
non-conforming parameter and can provide a simplified API as a
result would probably get used by me.

--
Kevin Grittner
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company