Re: Summary: what to do about INET/CIDR

On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, Tom Lane wrote:

> BTW, does it strike anyone else as peculiar that the host(),
> broadcast(), network(), and netmask() functions yield results
> of type text, rather than type inet?  Seems like it'd be considerably
> more useful if they returned values of type inet with masklen = 32
> (except for network(), which would keep the original masklen while
> coercing bits to its right to 0).
Yep, absolutely. 

> Given the current proposal that inet_out should always display all 4
> octets, and the existing fact that inet_out suppresses display of
> a /32 netmask, the textual display of SELECT host(...) etc would
> remain the same as it is now.  But AFAICS you could do more with
> an inet-type result value, like say compare it to other inet or cidr
> values ...
> Comments?  Why was it done this way, anyway?