Re: [INTERFACES] Field types (was Re: Return value of int)

On Sun, 2 May 1999, Tom Lane wrote:

> "D'Arcy" "J.M." Cain <darcy@druid.net> writes:
> > Regarding this, it would be nice if libpq had some official, documented
> > way of determining the type of the field.  Currently I deal with this
> > in PyGreSQL by stealing some #defines from src/include/catalog/pg_type.h,
> > something that isn't normally available to application programmers.
> 
> Well, I don't see a big problem with stealing the defines --- the odds
> of the OID for INT4, say, ever changing are pretty low.
> 
> But of course the "official, documented" way to find out what a given
> type OID means is
> 
>     SELECT typname FROM pg_type WHERE oid = <whatever>;



I'm just getting started on fiddling with libpq.  I am wondering why
this passage from man libpq doesn't address this issue?  I'm not being
a smarty here, I just don't know the answer.
PQftype returns the field type associated with  the             given  field  index.  The  integer  returned  is an
       internal coding of the type.  Field  indices  start             at 0.             Oid PQftype(PGresult *res,
                   int field_num);
 

Hugh Lawson
Greensboro, North Carolina
hglawson@nr.infi.net