Re: BUG #18190: PL/pgSQL does not document comparison operations on RECORD (or ROW) types

Hi David,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

tldr; My complaint is spurious. Maybe the docs could
be further improved in some way anyway.

On Sat, 11 Nov 2023 18:13:35 -0700
"David G. Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Friday, November 10, 2023, PG Bug reporting form
> <noreply(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:

> > Nothing is said about how to compare entire RECORD type variables,
> > or ROW type variables.
>
>
> There is, in the chapters with the word compare in their titles.
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-comparison.html#FUNCTIONS-COMPARISON
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-comparisons.html#FUNCTIONS-COMPARISONS

It turns out I was not having a problem comparing composite variables
with composite variables but composite variables with NULL.
As you point out below.

> You couldn’t make something less difficult to read? Like a
> self-contained select that shows true when you expected false? Or
> even a DO block with no dynamic SQL?

Apologies. I was excited about showing a (somewhat) practical example
of where I got surprised. I didn't stop to think about simpler ways
to assign a RECORD variable different values to come up with the
comparison operation which was then true focus of the issue. I'd been
looking at the code for some time and stripping it to the simplest
test of an EXECUTE result I could come up with since that was where
I was having a problem. When I finally figured out the problem was
with the comparison the code seemed simple and I didn't think to
strip out the EXECUTE.

> IF problem IS NOT NULL THEN
>
>
> As noted in the docs, “not (composite is null)” is not equivalent to
> “composite is not null”; you usually want the former.

Are you referring to here
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-comparison.html#FUNCTIONS-COMPARISON
where it says:

"If the expression is row-valued, then IS NULL is true when the row
expression itself is null or when all the row's fields are null, while IS NOT NULL is true when the row expression itself is non-null and all the row's fields are non-null. Because of this behavior, IS NULL and IS NOT NULL do not always return inverse results for row-valued expressions; in particular, a row-valued expression that contains both null and non-null fields will return false for both tests. In some cases, it may be preferable to write row IS DISTINCT FROM NULL or row IS NOT DISTINCT FROM NULL, which will simply check whether the overall row value is null without any additional tests on the row fields."

The above is what I should have been reading. I believe what
I would want (if my particular application wasn't better suited to
GET DIAGNOSITCS) is the IS DISTINCT FROM NULL construct.

I do see a very minor problem here, in that the text writes about
"row expressions" not composite data types. The problem being that
it's not entirely clear (to me) that a RECORD type is a row expression,
but it is clearly a composite. Or so it seems to me.

> The behavior involved is in no way specific to pl/pgsql; it doesn’t
> seem warranted to choose to link to SQL documentation from pl/pgsql
> generally. The writer of such code can reference the SQL docs for any
> SQL they need to write.

FWIW, I spent a long time looking for the relevant part of the docs
and for some reason didn't find it. This is unusual. I usually
find the organization of the docs very easy to navigate. I don't
have a good explanation of what went wrong but spent enough time at
it that filing a bug report seemed worthwhile.

Perhaps I'm too used to reading the PL/pgSQL chapter, which
makes it sound like RECORD variables are strictly a PL/pgSQL
construct. (And maybe they are.) It's unclear why this would matter,
and how such a thought would throw off my searching. But something
did.

(FWIW, The sentence "Note that RECORD is not a true data type,
only a placeholder." is pretty mysterious. I don't see anything
that informs me about what a RECORD variable is, composite,
ROW type, or whatever.)

You can close this bug, or whatever else makes sense to you.

Thank you for your attention. I hope the above is in some way
useful and the whole process is not a complete waste of your time.

Regards,

Karl <kop(at)karlpinc(dot)com>
Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
-- Robert A. Heinlein