Re: PG 14 release notes, first draft

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 03:51:39PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com> writes:
> > On 5/11/21 1:30 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >> It just feels like this change makes the function's behavior less
> >> consistent.
> 
> > See Tom's commit message here:
> > https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=3d0f68dd30612
> 
> > In particular:
> 
> >    "The variants of these functions that take
> >     numeric inputs (OIDs or column numbers) are
> >     supposed to return NULL rather than failing
> >     on bad input; this rule reduces problems with
> >     snapshot skew when queries apply the functions
> >     to all rows of a catalog."
> 
> Yeah, the null-return-for-bad-numeric-input behavior is important.
> Perhaps a case could be made for returning null for bad text
> input too, but I don't recall that anybody has asked for that.
> 
> A case could also be made that changing the behavior on the text
> side would break applications that expect the current behavior.
> So I'm disinclined to make a wholesale change there, without more
> evidence that it's a good idea.

OK, as long as we thought about this, I am fine.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.