Re: \timing interval

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 3:01 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Corey Huinker <corey(dot)huinker(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 2:43 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> >> Note that times from 1 second to 1 hour all get the nn:nn.nnn
> >> treatment. I experimented with these variants for sub-minute times:
> >> ...
> >> but it seems like the first variant is not terribly intelligible and
> >> the second variant is inconsistent with what happens for longer times.
>
> > Well, if we're looking to be consistent, here's what interval does now:
> > ...
> > Should we just plug into whatever code that uses?
>
> Well, that code's on the backend side so we're not going to just call it
> in any case. And I think we don't want to be quite so verbose as to go up
> to hh:mm:ss.fff as soon as we get past 1 second. However, comparing that
> output to what I had suggests that maybe it's better to keep a leading
> zero in two-digit fields, that is render times like "00:01.234",
> "01:23.456", or "01:23:45.678" rather than suppressing the initial zero as
> I had in my examples. It's an extra character but I think it reinforces
> the meaning.
>
> regards, tom lane
>

+1
The larger jump in widths from no MM:SS to HH:MM:SS is a good visual cue.
Jumping from MM:SS to H:MM:SS to HH:MM:SS would be more subtle and possibly
confusing.