Re: AGE function

On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 10:05:06PM -0700, Louise Catherine wrote:
> When I execute this statement :
> select AGE(TO_DATE('20041101','yyyymmdd'),
> TO_DATE('19991201','yyyymmdd'))
>
> at postgre 7.3.3, the result :
> age
> ---------------------
> 4 years 11 mons 1 day
>
> at postgre 8.0.3, the result :
> age
> ---------------
> 4 years 11 mons
>
> My question :
> 1. How does postgre 7.3.3 calculate AGE function?
> 2. Why the result produced by postgre 7.3.3
> is different from postgre 8.0.3 ?

I get the same answer ("4 years 11 mons") in 7.2.8, 7.3.10, 7.4.8,
8.0.3, and 8.1beta1. Have you verified that to_date() is returning
the correct dates? What are the results of the following queries
on each of your systems?

SELECT TO_DATE('19991201','yyyymmdd'), TO_TIMESTAMP('19991201','yyyymmdd');
SELECT TO_DATE('20041101','yyyymmdd'), TO_TIMESTAMP('20041101','yyyymmdd');
SHOW TimeZone;

What operating system are you using? Prior to 8.0, PostgreSQL
relied on the system's timezone files; as of 8.0 it has its own
timezone database. I don't know if that matters, but it's one
difference between 8.0 and previous versions that might be relevant
to the problem.

BTW, it's "PostgreSQL" or "Postgres," not "postgre."

--
Michael Fuhr