Re: SQL99 ARRAY support proposal

Joe Conway <mail(at)joeconway(dot)com> writes:
> So if I understand correctly, all instances of anyarray and anyelement
> in a function definition would need to be self-consistent, but the group
> could represent essentially any datatype with its corresponding array
> type. If we need more than one of these self consistent groups, we could
> resort to anyarray1/anyelement1, etc. Does this sound correct?

Right.

> Also, an implementation question: if I have a type oid for an element,
> what is the preferred method for determining the corresponding array?
> I'm thinking that the most efficient method might be to use the
> element-type name with a '_' prepended to get the array-type oid, but
> that seems ugly. Thoughts?

I was thinking about that earlier. Right now there is no other way.
We could consider adding a column to pg_type to link to the array type,
but I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. I think if you look around,
there's probably already a subroutine someplace that does the lookup
using the '_foo' approach.

regards, tom lane