> > I wonder what is the intention to allow such that syntax. It seems > > it's just useless since we could make a function bar() which accepts > > any charsets. > > One could override the behaviour of functions by adding a charset and a > adding new definition of an old function name for that charset. Like > adding a new collation and define a new cmp() function for that > collation that works different then some old definitons of cmp().
How could that be usefull? For example, length() returns character length no matter what the charset/collation is. I hardly imagin a function which changes its behavior according to charsets. > The whole discussion came because I start to look at problems from what is > in the specification and try to fit that into pg. Not everything will fit, > it's just my starting point when discussing. Tom starts at the other end > and then it looks like a big controversy. > > About the explosion of the number of functions needed. It's not obvious to > me that there will be an explosion if one manage to allow both full types > that include charset and more generic functions that work on any text > type. I don't understand your point. Today we already use one length() function for any charsets as Tom has already pointed out. > It seems to me that there are not that many interesting combinations > anyway. Most applications will use one charset and define functions that > work with just that charset. Really? One of the objectives of i18n is an application can handle multiple charsets. I don't want to write two applications just for the charset difference, for example English and Japanese. > Anyway, the only way to see what problems would arise is to try. I was > hoping that the step A and B in the plan was something that we wanted no > matter of how the locale problem was later solved. With those in place it > would be easier to experiment. The question in your approach is how you could handle the coercibility property. It's a transient and on memory property thus will not fit into the function declaration. No? -- Tatsuo Ishii ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]