Re: proposal: searching in array function - array_position

On 3/20/15 2:48 PM, Pavel Stehule wrote:

2015-03-20 18:47 GMT+01:00 Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
<mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>>:

    Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com
    <mailto:alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>> writes:
    > Pavel Stehule wrote:
    >> I am thinking, so it is ok - it returns a offset, not position.

    > So you can't use it as a subscript?  That sounds unfriendly.  Almost
    > every function using this will be subtly broken.

    I concur; perhaps "offset" was the design intention, but it's wrong.
    The result should be a subscript.


do you have any idea about name for this function? array_position is ok?

+1 on array_position. It's possible at some point we'll actually want array_offset that does what it claims.

On another note, you mentioned elsewhere that it's not possible to return anything other than an integer. Why can't there be a variation of this function that returns an array of ndims-1 that is the slice where a value was found?

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Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting
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