Re: Potential bug in ALTER TABLE?

Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai <asmodai(at)wxs(dot)nl> writes:
> just want to verify first with you guys before dumping it on the bugs
> list. Most likely I am just being silly here or something.

The ALTER ADD CONSTRAINT form creates a table constraint, ie, one that's
not attached to any particular column. If you write the constraint in
the CREATE TABLE as a table constraint, then you get the same result as
with ALTER ADD CONSTRAINT.

regression=# create table blah (name TEXT, CHECK (name IN ('blah', 'bleh')));
CREATE TABLE
regression=# \d blah
Table "public.blah"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+------+-----------
name | text |
Check constraints:
"$1" CHECK ((name = 'blah'::text) OR (name = 'bleh'::text))

If you don't like the automatically generated name, assign your own...

regression=# ALTER TABLE blah ADD CONSTRAINT fooey CHECK (name IN ('blah', 'bleh'));
ALTER TABLE
regression=# \d blah
Table "public.blah"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+------+-----------
name | text |
Check constraints:
"$1" CHECK ((name = 'blah'::text) OR (name = 'bleh'::text))
"fooey" CHECK ((name = 'blah'::text) OR (name = 'bleh'::text))

regards, tom lane