Convert Datum* to char*

From: Masterprojekt Naumann1 <mpws2013n1(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Convert Datum* to char*
Date: 2014-01-06 13:09:25
Message-ID: CANjJybQ=e60JjzY8x1_p6PEfMFnKNr2u9q5+gz33qmmig_e8Ww@mail.gmail.com
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Hi,

I want to read an attribute value from a TupleTableSlot. When I try to
convert an attribute of SQL type varchar from Datum* to char* with the help
of the method TextDatumGetCString(...), sometimes there is a segmentation
fault. The segmentation fault comes from the method
TextDatumGetCString(...), which is defined in utils/builtins.h.
Unfortunately, the fault is not always reproducible. I debugged the code
and figured out that the value of result->tts_values[i] sometimes is
random. It may be uninitialized memory. In other cases, the variable value
is NULL. Then, I can just skip the conversion from Datum* to char*, so that
there is no segmentation fault. I attached a patch with the code. The
relevant line is:
char *value = TextDatumGetCString(result->tts_values[i]);
The SQL-Query is a simple "SELECT * from ..." on the TPC-H table customer.
About every third execution leads to a segmentation fault.

Why is the memory of the variable uninitialized?
I am not very familiar with Postgres. Is there another method to get a
varchar attribute out of a TupleTableSlot as string?

Best regards
Maria

Attachment Content-Type Size
datumgetstring.patch text/x-patch 1.0 KB

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