On 12.01.23 14:55, Matthias van de Meent wrote:
>> Matter of taste, I guess. But more importantly, defining an operator
>> gives you many additional features that the planner can use to
>> optimize your query differently, which it can't do with functions. See
>> the COMMUTATOR, HASHES, etc. clause in the CREATE OPERATOR command.
> I see. Wouldn't it be better then to instead make it possible for the
> planner to detect the use of the functions used in operators and treat
> them as aliases of the operator? Or am I missing something w.r.t.
> differences between operator and function invocation?
>
> E.g. indexes on `int8pl(my_bigint, 1)` does not match queries for
> `my_bigint + 1` (and vice versa), while they should be able to support
> that, as OPERATOR(pg_catalog.+(int8, int8)) 's function is int8pl.
I have been thinking about something like this for a long time.
Basically, we would merge pg_proc and pg_operator internally. Then, all
the special treatment for operators would also be available to
two-argument functions.