Better explanation of unnest with ordinality

From: - <m7onov(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-docs(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Better explanation of unnest with ordinality
Date: 2021-01-27 15:44:11
Message-ID: FF1FB31F-0507-4F18-9559-2DE6E07E3B43@gmail.com
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Hi guys!
I’ve recently come across a query of the kind:
select * from unnest(array[1,2,3,4]) with ordinality t;
and was asked whether ordinality value is guaranteed to be the same as the array index of the array element in the same tuple. The only relevant thing about ordinality column I’ve found is here https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/queries-table-expressions.html <https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/queries-table-expressions.html> but it’s not clear what is the order of function result set. According to ISO SQL:2011 standard draft (the only one I’ve found in internet) (7.6 <table reference>) unnest is not a function but a special syntax to make a table from collection. It states that in case of array argument and "with ordinality" this statement returns ordinality column that matches array indexes. Is it possible to clear it out in docs or maybe it’s an intentional deviation from standard so we can’t rely on <ordinality> == <element index in array>?

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