Re: casting strings to multidimensional arrays yields strange results

[ cc'ing pghackers in case anyone wants to object ]

Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> Right now I think the sanest behavior would be to throw an error on
>> non-rectangular input.  Once we have support for null elements in
>> arrays, however, it would arguably be reasonable to pad with NULLs
>> where needed, so that the above would be read as
>> 
>>     {{1,2},{2,3},{4,NULL}}
>> 
>>    {{1,NULL},{2,3},{4,5}}
>> 
>> respectively.  If that's the direction we want to head in, it would
>> probably be best to leave array_in alone until we can do that; users
>> tend to get unhappy when we change behavior repeatedly.

> I think that even once we support NULL array elements, they should be 
> explicitly requested -- i.e. throwing an error on non-rectangular input 
> is still the right thing to do. I haven't suggested that in the past 
> because of the backward-compatibility issue, but maybe now is the time 
> to bite the bullet.

Okay with me.  Anyone on pghackers not happy?

> If you think this qualifies as a bug fix for 7.5, I can take a look at 
> it next week.

Yeah, we can call it a bug fix.
        regards, tom lane