Robert Haas <[email protected]> writes:
> On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Tom Lane <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Maybe, but neither UNION nor UNION ALL would duplicate the semantics
>> of OR, so there's some handwaving here that I missed.

> SELECT * FROM foo WHERE a = 5 OR a = 4
> isn't equivalent to
> SELECT * FROM foo WHERE a = 5
> UNION
> SELECT * FROM foo WHERE a = 4
> ?

It probably is, but you're assuming that "a" appears in the list of
columns being unioned.  If you make that just "SELECT b FROM ..."
then the latter form gets rid of duplicate b values where the first
doesn't.  On the other hand, UNION ALL might introduce duplicates
not present in the OR query's result.

                        regards, tom lane


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