Re: CHAR constants

> > So, what should the behavior be of a constant declared as
> > CHAR 'hi'
> > ? Right now it fails, since SQL9x asks that the char type defaults to a
> > length of one and our parser does not distinguish between usage as a
> > constant declaration and as a column definition (where you would want
> > the "char(1)" to be filled in). But istm that for a constant string, the
> > length should be whatever the string is, or unspecified.

OK, I've got patches (not yet applied; any comments before they go
in??)...

> Seems we should convert that to char(2). Not sure how difficult it is
> to do though...

afaict there is no need to internally set a specific length; it is
sufficient to set typmod to -1 *in this case only*. So I've got patches
which separate uses of character string declarations in constants vs
others (e.g. column declarations).

So, before patches this fails:

thomas=# select char 'hi';
ERROR: value too long for type character(1)

and after patches:

thomas=# select char 'hi';
bpchar
--------
hi
(1 row)

thomas=# select char(1) 'hi';
ERROR: value too long for type character(1)

btw, I first tried solving this with in-line actions just setting a flag
to indicate that this was going to be a production for a constant. And
probably set a record for shift/reduce conflicts:

bison -y -d -v gram.y
conflicts: 20591 shift/reduce, 10 reduce/reduce

Woohoo!! :)

- Thomas