Re: Selecting a constant question

Dann Corbit wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Hannu Krosing [mailto:hannu@skype.net]
>>> Since libpq function PQfsize returns -2 for all constant character
>>> strings in SQL statements ... What is the proper procedure to determine
>>> the length of a constant character column after query execution but
>>> before fetching the first row of data?
>> Why not just get the first row and determine the width from it before
>> you actually use any of tha data ?
> 
> What if the second row is 1000x longer?

Thats exactly the point. Consider
select mytext from mytable ;

How can PostgreSQL possibly know the maximum length
of the returned values *before* it has scanned the
whole table?

greetings, Florian Pflug