Hi,
Seems like supporting only constants is a good starting
point. The only thing that is likely confusing for users is that NUMERICs
(and potentially constants of other types) are unsupported. Wouldn't it be
fairly simple to support them via something like the following?
is_const(element) || (is_coercion(element) && is_const(element->child))
It definitely makes sense to implement that, although I don't think it's
going to be acceptable to do that via directly listing conditions an
element has to satisfy. It probably has to be more flexible, sice we
would like to extend it in the future. My plan is to address this in a
follow-up patch, when the main mechanism is approved. Would you agree
with this approach?
I still think it's counterintuitive and I'm pretty sure people would
even report this as a bug because not knowing about the difference in
internal representation you would expect NUMERICs to work the same way
other constants work. If anything we would have to document it.
Can't we do something pragmatic and have something like
IsMergableInElement() which for now only supports constants and later
can be extended? Or what exactly do you mean by "more flexible"?
--
David Geier
(ServiceNow)
