Re: RFC: Remove contrib entirely

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Well, that module has already been rewritten once (which proves that
> there's an audience out there for it).  Perhaps somebody will rewrite it
> again to support a non-hardwired set of ranges.  Now that we have the
> concept of an extension configuration table, that'd be one possible
> way to fix it ...

I wouldn't bother.

ISBNs already have a UPC-style weighted sum check digit that will
catch the vast majority of errors, including all transposition errors.
You'd have to try hard to fatfinger an ISBN in a way that produced
something that accidentally had a valid check digit.

contrib/isn suffers from a bad case of protecting against Machiavelli
rather than Murphy. The enforcement isn't just obviously wrong, it's
also ridiculous in principle.

You're right, though -- we have better things to worry about.
-- 
Peter Geoghegan