Re: Cleaning up the INET/CIDR mess

Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Without the flag, it's okay for cidr-to-inet to be a
> >> binary-compatible (no function) conversion.  However, inet-to-cidr
> >> has to either zero out bits to the right of the netmask, or error out
> >> if any are set.  Joachim Wieland posted a patch that makes the
> >> coercion function just silently zero out any such bits.  That's OK
> >> with me, but does anyone want to argue for an error?
> 
> > Zero the bits if it's an explicit cast, raise an error if not.
> 
> I know there's precedent for such behavior in the SQL spec, but it
> always seemed pretty ugly to me :-(.  The patch-as-committed just
> silently zeroes the bits during any inet->cidr cast.  I'll change it
> if there's consensus that that's a bad idea, but I don't really see
> a reason to.

I agree.  Let's do the zeroing and see if people complain about it. 
Throwing an error seems extreme.

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