Re: What is the name pseudo column

On 12/15/2010 5:43 PM, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> On Wednesday 15 December 2010 1:27:19 pm David Fetter wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 01:50:54PM -0600, Jack Christensen wrote:
>>> I was just surprised when accidentally selecting a non-existent name
>>> column there was no error -- instead something came back.
>>>
>>> select accounts.name from accounts limit 1 ->
>>> (1,65522,1,0.00,,"2010-07-22 09:57:26.281172-05",2)
>>>
>>> It appears it tries to return the entire row in an array (but longer
>>> rows get truncated).
>>>
>>> I've searched Google and the PG docs but I haven't had any luck.
>> What happened here is that you ran into PostgreSQL's "charming" habit
>> of using the argument.function notation, so you called the "name"
>> function, i.e. the one that casts to name, on the entire row from your
>> accounts table.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> David.
>>
> In the for what is worth department that behavior is going away in 9.1. See here
> for a detailed explanation:
> http://www.depesz.com/index.php/2010/11/08/waiting-for-9-1-removed-autocast-footgun/#more-1908
It makes sense now what's happening -- but glad to see that "feature" is
going away.

Thanks.

--
Jack Christensen
jackc(at)hylesanderson(dot)edu