Re: Over-rigidity in recent to_timestamp() rewrite

On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 4:39 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Whilst poking at bug #4702 I noticed that PG CVS HEAD rejects use of
> AD/BC notation, as well as CC (separate century) fields, in combination
> with ISO-style day numbers.  I don't see the point of this.  It's
> historically inaccurate, no doubt, but so is use of Gregorian counting.
> So I suggest the attached fix.  Does this make anyone unhappy?
>

I don't have any technical problem with using CC to specify the
century separately ... although I do wonder why anybody would want to
do so.

Apparently ISO 8601 isn't explicit about how years earlier than 1 AD
might be handled, because the standard is only designed to support
dates going back as far as 1582. However, the basis for "week date"
years is supposed to be the same as that for Gregorian years, so I
guess BC could work the same way in both systems.

Short version: I think using CC and AD/BC in combination with week
dates would be downright weird, but I don't object to the patch.

Cheers,
BJ