On Tue, Sep 10, 2024 at 8:46 AM jian he <jian.universal...@gmail.com> wrote: > > hi, > one minor issue. not that minor, > since many DDLs need to consider the system attribute. > > looking at these functions: > SearchSysCacheCopyAttName > SearchSysCacheAttName > get_attnum > > get_attnum says: > Returns InvalidAttrNumber if the attr doesn't exist (or is dropped). > > So I conclude that "attnum == 0" is not related to the idea of a system > column. > > > for example, ATExecColumnDefault, following code snippet, > the second ereport should be "if (attnum < 0)" > ========== > attnum = get_attnum(RelationGetRelid(rel), colName); > if (attnum == InvalidAttrNumber) > ereport(ERROR, > (errcode(ERRCODE_UNDEFINED_COLUMN), > errmsg("column \"%s\" of relation \"%s\" does not exist", > colName, RelationGetRelationName(rel)))); > > /* Prevent them from altering a system attribute */ > if (attnum <= 0) > ereport(ERROR, > (errcode(ERRCODE_FEATURE_NOT_SUPPORTED), > errmsg("cannot alter system column \"%s\"", > colName))); > ========== > but there are many occurrences of "attnum <= 0". > I am sure tablecmds.c, we can change to "attnum < 0". > not that sure with other places.
What it really means is "Prevent them from altering any attribute not defined by user" - a whole row reference is not defined explicitly by user; it's collection of user defined attributes and it's not cataloged. I think we generally confuse between system attribute and !(user attribute); the grey being attnum = 0. It might be better to create macros for these cases and use them to make their usage clear. e.g. #define ATTNUM_IS_SYSTEM(attnum) ((attnum) < 0) #define ATTNUM_IS_USER_DEFINED(attnum) ((attnum) > 0) #define WholeRowAttrNumber 0 add good comments about usage near their definitions and use appropriately in the code. Example above would then turn into (notice ! in the condition) /* Prevent them from altering an attribute not defined by user */ if (!ATTNUM_IS_USER_DEFINED(attnum) ) ereport(ERROR, (errcode(ERRCODE_FEATURE_NOT_SUPPORTED), errmsg("attribute \"%s\" is not a user-defined attribute", colName))); -- Best Wishes, Ashutosh Bapat