* Greg Stark ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > I have a question in a different direction. What is the meaning of the network > mask in the inet data type anyways? Hosts don't have network masks, only > networks. > > If we could store inet in four bytes it would be vastly more efficient both in > disk space usage and in cpu at runtime. > > I think it would also clear up the perpetual user confusion between the two > datatypes. I posit that the main source of the confusion is that currently > Postgres lets you use inet for everything, even if what you're really storing > is a network address range which is what the cidr datatype is really for.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. It also makes the only cast option
from inet to cidr to be with a /32 and thus there's no zeroing of bits.
It would then be nice to have a function to which you pass in a cidr and
a netmask and say "give me the CIDR this CIDR is in with this mask".
With the inet-to-cidr implicit cast you could use this function to get
the CIDR you want without having to worry about the implicit cast
throwing data away. The cidr-to-inet is then throwing away the mask and
so I'm not sure we should have an implicit cast in that direction but
honestly I wouldn't complain if we did.
Thanks,
Stephen
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