Peter Eisentraut <pe...@eisentraut.org> writes: > On 01.07.24 01:54, David Rowley wrote: >> I think there are valid reasons to use the special timestamp input >> values. One that I can think of is for use with partition pruning. If >> you have a time-range partitioned table and want the planner to prune >> the partitions rather than the executor, you could use >> 'now'::timestamp in your queries to allow the planner to prune.
> Yeah, but is that a good user interface? Or is that just something that > happens to work now with the pieces that happened to be there, rather > than a really designed interface? That's not a very useful argument to make. What percentage of the SQL language as a whole is legacy cruft that we'd do differently if we could? I think the answer is depressingly high. Adding more special-purpose features to the ones already there doesn't move that needle in a desirable direction. I'd be more excited about this discussion if I didn't think that the chances of removing 'now'::timestamp are exactly zero. You can't just delete useful decades-old features, whether there's a better way or not. regards, tom lane