Re: Have I found an interval arithmetic bug?

On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 11:33:10AM -0500, Justin Pryzby wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 10:21:26PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > I wish I could figure out how to improve it any futher. What is odd is
> > that I have never seen this reported as a problem before. I plan to
> > apply this early next week for PG 14.
>
> On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 01:05:42PM -0700, Bryn Llewellyn wrote:
> > bruce(at)momjian(dot)us wrote:
> > > Yes, looking at the code, it seems we only spill down to one unit, not more. I think we need to have a discussion if we want to change that.
>
> If this is a bug, then there's no deadline - and if you're proposing a behavior
> change, then I don't think it's a good time to begin the discussion.

Well, bug or not, we are not going to change back branches for this, and
if you want a larger discussion, it will have to wait for PG 15.

> > https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/datatype-datetime.html#DATATYPE-INTERVAL-INPUT
> > « …field values can have fractional parts; for example '1.5 week' or '01:02:03.45'. Such input is converted to the appropriate number of months, days, and seconds for storage. When this would result in a fractional number of months or days, the fraction is added to the lower-order fields using the conversion factors 1 month = 30 days and 1 day = 24 hours. For example, '1.5 month' becomes 1 month and 15 days. Only seconds will ever be shown as fractional on output. »

I see that. What is not clear here is how far we flow down. I was
looking at adding documentation or regression tests for that, but was
unsure. I adjusted the docs slightly in the attached patch.

> Your patch changes what seems to be the intended behavior, with the test case
> added by:
>
> |commit 57bfb27e60055c10e42b87e68a894720c2f78e70
> |Author: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
> |Date: Mon Sep 4 01:26:28 2006 +0000
> |
> | Fix interval input parser so that fractional weeks and months are
> | cascaded first to days and only what is leftover into seconds. This
>
> And documented by:
>
> |commit dbf57d31f8d7bf5c058a9fab2a1ccb4a336864ce
> |Author: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
> |Date: Sun Nov 9 17:09:48 2008 +0000
> |
> | Add some documentation about handling of fractions in interval input.
> | (It's always worked like this, but we never documented it before.)
>
> If you were to change the behavior, I think you'd have to update the
> documentation, too - but I think that's not a desirable change.

> I *am* curious why the YEAR, DECADE, CENTURY, AND MILLENIUM cases only handle
> fractional intervals down to the next smaller unit, and not down to
> seconds/milliseconds. I wrote a patch to handle that by adding
> AdjustFractMons(), if we agree that it's desirable to change.

The interaction of months/days/seconds is so imprecise that passing it
futher down doesn't make much sense, and suggests a precision that
doesn't exist, but if people prefer that we can do it.

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

If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.