Re: FW: BUG #17258: Unexpected results in CHAR(1) data type

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 1:17 PM David M. Calascibetta <
david(at)calascibetta(dot)com> wrote:

>
> Subject: RE: BUG #17258: Unexpected results in CHAR(1) data type
>
> Ok, but my example was just a simplified version of what is going on.
> The actual problem stems from a CHAR(1) column data type that is behaving
> the same way.
> I was just trying to create a super-simple example of the problem.
> It still seems to me that a CHAR(1) should never be zero length,
> regardless of how it's implemented.
>
>
This qualifies as a feature request, not a bug. One could write a version
of substr that does what you expect (it probably wouldn't be named substr
though) and takes in a character data type. It's just no one has, nor is
likely to. Thus you are stuck using versions that take in text and you get
the char-to-text casting side effects.

If you do octet_length(' ':: character(1)) it will return 1, not zero. So
it indeed has a length one.

David J.