Tom wrote: > "Ron Mayer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Compared to the ISO 8601 time interval specification, the > > postgresql interval syntax is quite verbose. For example: > > > Postgresql interval: ISO8601 Interval > > --------------------------------------------------- > > '1 year 6 months' 'P1Y6M' > > '3 hours 25 minutes 42 seconds' 'PT3H25M42S' > > Er, don't we support that already? I know I saw code to support > something much like that syntax last time I looked into the datetime > routines. >
Nope. Postgresql supports a rather bizzare shorthand that has a similar syntax, but AFAICT, doesn't match ISO 8601 in any way that makes it practical. A disclaimer, I have the "Final Draft" (ISO/TC 154N 362 of 2000-12-19) of the spec; but have not seen the official, expensive, version. ftp://ftp.qsl.net/pub/g1smd/154N362_.PDF For example, if I read it right, I have differences like this: Interval ISO Postgres 8601 shorthand ----------------------------------------------------- '1 year 1 minute' 'P1YT1M' '1Y1M' '1 year 1 month' 'P1Y1M' N/A The best part about the postgresql syntax is that they omit the required 'P', so it's easy to differentiate between the two. :-) Perhaps one could argue that the postgres shorthand should follow the ISO conventions, but I'd not want to break backward compatability, incase someone out there is using '1H30M' and expecting minutes instead of months. If we didn't want to support two syntaxes, I wouldn't mind eventually depricating the less-standard one. Ron ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
