Re: Ambiguous language in Table 8.13. Special Date/Time Inputs [EXT]

From: "Jonathan S(dot) Katz" <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org>
To: David Harper <adh(at)sanger(dot)ac(dot)uk>, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
Cc: Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>, pgsql-docs(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Ambiguous language in Table 8.13. Special Date/Time Inputs [EXT]
Date: 2019-07-10 17:32:31
Message-ID: 74c7b4d4-5c0c-29a2-89aa-9395a38e0633@postgresql.org
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On 7/10/19 6:13 AM, David Harper wrote:
>> I actually agree with your opinion that "midnight" is fine.
>> That text has been that way for over fifteen years[1], and
>> nobody's complained before that it was ambiguous.
>
> Conversely, how many users over the past fifteen years have read that table, and then felt compelled (as I did) to run a query such as
>
> select 'today'::timestamp,'yesterday'::timestamp,'tomorrow'::timestamp;
>
> on their PostgreSQL cluster to clear the ambiguity for themselves?

I've heard of one, but only just recently :)

If we were to s/midnight/00:00:00/ we'd probably want to do it
everywhere midnight appears. This occurs in a few places in the docs:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-formatting.html (SSSS)
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/protocol-replication.html
(XlogData section)

and there are some various code comments as well.

Count me as a +0 vote, as I've always interpreted it the way Bruce & Tom
said upthread, but if we want to change it I can write a patch.

Jonathan

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