Dear MariaDB Developer Community, I hope you are doing well.
I am *Harshit Vijay Kumar*, a final-year undergraduate student in Computer Science. I have been researching *MDEV-36107 <https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-36107>* for *GSoC 2025* and, during my exploration of operator operations in MariaDB, I came across some behaviors that caught my attention. To further investigate, I compared these behaviors with MySQL to understand their differences. *Observations: * *(1) Handling Large Number Multiplications Using Exponents* - Currently, multiplying two large integers results in an *overflow*, returning 0 instead of using an exponent-based representation. SELECT 18014398509481984 * 18014398509481984; *MariaDB Output:* 0 *SQL Output:* 3.2451855365842673e+32 - Interestingly, if one of the operands is a *floating-point number*, the result is computed without overflow: SELECT 18014398509481984 * 18014398509481984399405765456789087654390954.0; *Output:* 324518553658426733978210646499548233026655740664701555572736.0 - This inconsistency between integer-only and mixed-type operations is confusing. A standardized approach, possibly leveraging exponent notation, could improve clarity. *(2) Rounding Floating-Point Outputs* - MariaDB currently returns full precision in floating-point calculations, which can lead to unnecessary precision in practical use cases. SELECT 1.0376728938476536278903984765 + 1.039876453672890938476536278902345678908765434567890; *MariaDB Output:* 2.07754934752054456636693475540234567891 *SQL Output:* 2.077549347520544 - A rounding mechanism would allow for concise representation and reduce storage overhead, especially for users unaware of excessive precision in their datasets. *(3) Eliminating Unnecessary Zeros in Floating-Point Representation* SELECT 1.0000 * 1.0000000000; *MariaDB Output:* 1.00000000000000 - While useful in some cases, the inclusion of excessive trailing zeros unnecessarily increases storage usage. A more compact representation should be considered, where only *significant digits* are retained. *(4) Implementation of == Equality Operator* - Currently, MariaDB allows the *assignment operator (=)* for comparisons. However, since = is primarily used for assignments, this dual-purpose behavior can be confusing. - Proposal: Introduce a dedicated *== equality operator* for clear and intuitive comparisons across *INT, FLOAT, BOOL, and CHAR* types. - Expected behavior: - If values match → return 1 - If values don’t match → return 0 Testing & Next Steps To implement these improvements, I plan to add *test cases* in mysql-test covering all edge cases for these operators. I will follow the approach used in the following implementations: - func_equal.result <https://github.com/MariaDB/server/blob/main/mysql-test/main/func_equal.result> - func_equal.test <https://github.com/MariaDB/server/blob/main/mysql-test/main/func_equal.test> I would really appreciate your insights on these ideas. If any of these behaviors have intentional design choices, I would love to understand the rationale behind them. Looking forward to your feedback! Best Regards, Harshit Vijay Kumar
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