Re: Ambiguous language in Table 8.13. Special Date/Time Inputs [EXT]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 01:32:31PM -0400, Jonathan Katz wrote:
> On 7/10/19 6:13 AM, David Harper wrote:
> >> I actually agree with your opinion that "midnight" is fine.
> >> That text has been that way for over fifteen years[1], and
> >> nobody's complained before that it was ambiguous.
> >
> > Conversely, how many users over the past fifteen years have read that table, and then felt compelled (as I did) to run a query such as
> >
> > select 'today'::timestamp,'yesterday'::timestamp,'tomorrow'::timestamp;
> >
> > on their PostgreSQL cluster to clear the ambiguity for themselves?
>
> I've heard of one, but only just recently :)
>
> If we were to s/midnight/00:00:00/ we'd probably want to do it
> everywhere midnight appears. This occurs in a few places in the docs:
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-formatting.html (SSSS)
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/protocol-replication.html
> (XlogData section)
>
> and there are some various code comments as well.
>
> Count me as a +0 vote, as I've always interpreted it the way Bruce & Tom
> said upthread, but if we want to change it I can write a patch.

The thing I don't like about 00:00:00 is that it is a lot of information
to say "the start of the day", while I assumed midnight was clear on
that. If we can find a way to say "start of the day (midnight)", that
would work.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I. As I am, so you will be. +
+ Ancient Roman grave inscription +