Re: BUG #16939: Plural interval for negative singular

On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 01:06:16PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 01:02:44PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> > Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> > > On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 12:45:34PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> > >> I agree with Noah's opinion that we should stick to the historical
> > >> behavior in the interval I/O functions. There is not enough solidity
> > >> in the "this is grammatically wrong" argument to justify taking any
> > >> risk of application breakage, and it seems like there is some risk of
> > >> that there.
> >
> > > Are you saying we should revert the patch and leave the plurals
> > > inconsistent in different places? We were already expressing -1 as
> > > singular in most of the places I saw.

Which places did you find? I used the following to check for code like you
were adding, but it probably missed things:

$ git grep '"s"' 5da9868^ | grep abs
5da9868^:src/backend/utils/adt/datetime.c: (abs(sec) != 1 || fsec != 0) ? "s" : "");
5da9868^:src/interfaces/ecpg/pgtypeslib/interval.c: (abs(sec) != 1 || fsec != 0) ? "s" : "");

> > As far as the changes in datetime.c and interval.c are concerned,
> > yes. I don't care too much about what you did in fe-print.c,
>
> Well, we should then add a comment that this is inconsistent but should
> not be changed.

No objection to having a comment.