Re: UUID's as primary keys

Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> writes:
> The input functions get it, the output functions (bpcharout,
> bpcharsend, etc) don't. Which makes it kind of hard to print a raw
> value if you don't know how long it's going to be. They used to, but
> that was removed some time back.

Even back then you couldn't rely on the typmod value to be supplied;
it was quite likely to be passed as -1.  The issue is not actually
with on-disk storage, it is with function/operator arguments and
results.  Those have never been identified any more closely than by
giving a type OID.  So for any value that came from a function,
you won't have a typmod, and you'd better be able to find out all
you need to know just by inspecting the value itself.  Hence, length
words.

This is all pretty off-topic for pgsql-general, isn't it?

            regards, tom lane