On Fri, Jan 20, 2023 at 12:58 PM Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > I don't mind if you write something like > > A float4 value is a 4-byte IEEE single-precision floating point > number. It is transmitted in network byte order, so you must > convert to local byte order. (C users can do this portably > using the standard ntohl() function.) > > but I'm not sure an example is worth more than such a parenthetical > comment. Perhaps others disagree, though.
I don't disagree with that. I do think that when you suggested documenting this rather than just adding some examples, you moved the goalposts a long way. If we're going to add this to the documentation, it probably ought to cover every data type we ship. Overall, I think that would be a better result than just adding a few examples for the most common data types to testlibpq*.c, but it's also substantially more work. I do agree with you that if we're going to document this, as opposed to provide examples, then a narrative style is more appropriate than a whole bunch of small sample programs; maintaining working code in the documentation seems like an annoying amount of maintenance and is probably not the most efficient way to communicate useful information. -- Robert Haas EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com