Re: patch: bytea_agg

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> wrote:
>> Robert Haas wrote:
>>> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> wrote:
>>>> On ons, 2011-12-21 at 11:04 +0100, Pavel Stehule wrote:
>>>>> this patch adds a bytea_agg aggregation.
>>>>>
>>>>> It allow fast bytea concatetation.
>>>>
>>>> Why not call it string_agg?  All the function names are the
>>>> same between text and bytea (e.g., ||, substr, position,
>>>> length).  It would be nice not to introduce arbitrary
>>>> differences.
>>>
>>> Well, because it doesn't operate on strings.
>>
>> Sure, binary strings.  Both the SQL standard and the PostgreSQL
>> documentation use that term.
> 
> I'm unimpressed by that argument, but let's see what other people
> think.
I, for one, try to be consistent about saying "character strings"
when that is what I mean.  Since at least the SQL-92 standard there
have been both "character strings" and "bit strings", with a certain
amount of symmetry in how they are handled.   I don't remember when
binary strings were introduced, but that is the standard
terminology.  There is, for example, a standard substring function
for binary strings.
-Kevin