Re: bit strings - anyone working on them?

At 12:08 PM 22/04/2003 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>regression=# select cast(8 as bit(32));
>                bit
>----------------------------------
>  00000000000000000000000000001000
>(1 row)

That's also a little scary. "select cast(8 as bit(64))" is not what one 
would expect either, except if you view it as a cast to bit(32) followed by 
bit(64).

It's also sad that substring (which is I think the only get_bit-like 
function) starts at the left. I would have expected the low order bits in 
this model to be at the left, so Cast(X as bit(N)) would work consistently.

We still seem to be lacking > 64 bit numeric support (which is where I was 
coming from with the varbit<->numeric suggestion).

Is there a view as to which bit should be considered low order?

Or is there a better data type for arbitrary length bit masks?


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