Re: Bug in to_timestamp().

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> amul sul <sul_amul(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)in> writes:
>> It's look like bug in to_timestamp() function when format string has more whitespaces compare to input string, see below:
>
> No, I think this is a case of "input doesn't match the format string".
>
> As a rule of thumb, using to_timestamp() for input that could be parsed
> just fine by the standard timestamp input function is not a particularly
> good idea. to_timestamp() is meant to deal with input that is in a
> well-defined format that happens to not be parsable by timestamp_in.
> This example doesn't meet either of those preconditions.

I think a space in the format string should skip a whitespace
character in the input string, but not a non-whitespace character.
It's my understanding that these functions exist in no small part for
compatibility with Oracle, and Oracle declines to skip the digit '1'
on the basis of an extra space in the format string, which IMHO is the
behavior any reasonable user would expect.

--
Robert Haas
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