Re: infinity as a date

Tom and Everyone,
    Not that I feel that I get a vote, but it seems to me that an infinite date
doesn't make any sense.  An interval is a measure of something (a value),
which could be infinite, but a date is a point in time (not a value),
similar to a location, and I don't think that the concept of an infinite
point in time makes any more sense than an infinite street address.
    Just my $0.02.
Thanks,
Peter Darley

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Tom Lane
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 10:35 PM
To: Jean-Christian Imbeault
Cc: pgsql-general
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] infinity as a date


Jean-Christian Imbeault <jc@mega-bucks.co.jp> writes:
> As an aside, why is there a concept of an infinite timestamp but not one
> for date?

Purely historical, I'd imagine.  The various Postgres datatypes were
developed at different times by different people.  Tom Lockhart perhaps
remembers more about this particular discrepancy.

If you are sufficiently annoyed, please submit patches to make DATE
treat MAXINT and MININT as +infinity and -infinity instead of normal
dates.  I would expect we'd accept such a patch.

            regards, tom lane

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