Overlap operators for ARRAY and NULLs

From: Itagaki Takahiro <itagaki(dot)takahiro(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Overlap operators for ARRAY and NULLs
Date: 2010-11-17 11:33:55
Message-ID: AANLkTikL_DRkvwWPtigkR-UU-f5+Et_XDdJU+C7XLX7z@mail.gmail.com
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There might be inconsistency in overlap operators for array
types ( <@, @>, and && ) when the argument arrays contain NULLs.

- SELECT 2 = ANY (ARRAY[1, NULL]) => NULL
- SELECT ARRAY[2] <@ ARRAY[1, NULL] => false

NULL means "unknown" in definition, so should it return NULL
rather than false?

I found the issue when I read spec of MULTISET. In the SQL
standard, the following expression returns NULL. I was thinking
to make SUBMULTISET OF to be an alias of <@ operator, but
they seems to be incompatible.

- MULTISET[2] SUBMULTISET OF MULTISET[1, NULL] => NULL

Will we change the operator's behavior? It would be more
consistent, but incompatible with older server versions.
If impossible, I'll add separated submultiset_of() function
instead of <@ operator for MULTISET supports.

--
Itagaki Takahiro

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