Re: hackers-digest V1 #894

> Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 21:43:17 +0200 (MET DST)
> From: Maarten Boekhold <maartenb@dutepp0.et.tudelft.nl>
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Minor bug: inconsistent handling of overlength names
>
> On Sun, 26 Jul 1998, Tom Lane wrote:
>
> > DROP INDEX fails on overlength table names:
> >
> > tgl=> CREATE UNIQUE INDEX MarketOrderHistory_sequenceNo_Index
> > tgl-> ON MarketOrderHistory USING btree (sequenceNo);
> > CREATE
> > tgl=> DROP INDEX MarketOrderHistory_sequenceNo_Index;
> > ERROR:  pg_ownercheck: class "marketorderhistory_sequenceno_index" not found
> > tgl=> DROP INDEX MarketOrderHistory_sequenceNo_I;
> > DROP
> >
> > Evidently DROP INDEX is using a second-rate way of reducing the given
> > name to canonical form for comparisons.
> >
> > Some further experimentation shows that CREATE TABLE won't let you
> > create a relation name >= 32 characters in the first place.  So there's
> > some inconsistency about what's done with overlength names.
> >
> > It seems to me that we ought to have consistent treatment of long names,
> > and the treatment I like is the one that CREATE INDEX is using:
> > silently truncate the given name to what we can handle, and accept
> > it as long as the truncated form is unique.  This is the time-honored
> > way of handling overlength names in compilers, and it works well.
>
> Same thing goes for user-names. I recently created a user named (for the
> sake of example) '1234567890', using CREATE USER. No complaints here, but
> trying to connect with user '1234567890' fails. You can connect with
> '12345678'.

And the actual username can be 32 bytes ;(

investor=> \d pg_user

Table    = pg_user
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+-------+
|              Field               |              Type                |
Length|
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+-------+
| usename                          | name
|    32 |
| usesysid                         | int4
|     4 |
| usecreatedb                      | bool
|     1 |
| usetrace                         | bool
|     1 |
| usesuper                         | bool
|     1 |
| usecatupd                        | bool
|     1 |
| passwd                           | text
|   var |
| valuntil                         | abstime
|     4 |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+-------+

----------------
Hannu