Improve documentation about array concat operator vs. underlying functions.

The documentation implied that there was seldom any reason to use the
array_append, array_prepend, and array_cat functions directly.  But that's
not really true, because they can help make it clear which case is meant,
which the || operator can't do since it's overloaded to represent all three
cases.  Add some discussion and examples illustrating the potentially
confusing behavior that can ensue if the parser misinterprets what was
meant.

Per a complaint from Michael Herold.  Back-patch to 9.2, which is where ||
started to behave this way.
This commit is contained in:
Tom Lane 2015-07-09 18:50:31 -04:00
parent 193e027075
commit 5acc7730c8

View File

@ -346,7 +346,7 @@ SELECT array_length(schedule, 1) FROM sal_emp WHERE name = 'Carol';
<programlisting>
SELECT cardinality(schedule) FROM sal_emp WHERE name = 'Carol';
cardinality
cardinality
-------------
4
(1 row)
@ -494,11 +494,7 @@ SELECT array_dims(ARRAY[1,2] || ARRAY[[3,4],[5,6]]);
<function>array_prepend</function>, <function>array_append</function>,
or <function>array_cat</function>. The first two only support one-dimensional
arrays, but <function>array_cat</function> supports multidimensional arrays.
Note that the concatenation operator discussed above is preferred over
direct use of these functions. In fact, these functions primarily exist for use
in implementing the concatenation operator. However, they might be directly
useful in the creation of user-defined aggregates. Some examples:
Some examples:
<programlisting>
SELECT array_prepend(1, ARRAY[2,3]);
@ -531,6 +527,45 @@ SELECT array_cat(ARRAY[5,6], ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]]);
{{5,6},{1,2},{3,4}}
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>
In simple cases, the concatenation operator discussed above is preferred
over direct use of these functions. However, because the concatenation
operator is overloaded to serve all three cases, there are situations where
use of one of the functions is helpful to avoid ambiguity. For example
consider:
<programlisting>
SELECT ARRAY[1, 2] || '{3, 4}'; -- the untyped literal is taken as an array
?column?
-----------
{1,2,3,4}
SELECT ARRAY[1, 2] || '7'; -- so is this one
ERROR: malformed array literal: "7"
SELECT ARRAY[1, 2] || NULL; -- so is an undecorated NULL
?column?
----------
{1,2}
(1 row)
SELECT array_append(ARRAY[1, 2], NULL); -- this might have been meant
array_append
--------------
{1,2,NULL}
</programlisting>
In the examples above, the parser sees an integer array on one side of the
concatenation operator, and a constant of undetermined type on the other.
The heuristic it uses to resolve the constant's type is to assume it's of
the same type as the operator's other input &mdash; in this case,
integer array. So the concatenation operator is presumed to
represent <function>array_cat</>, not <function>array_append</>. When
that's the wrong choice, it could be fixed by casting the constant to the
array's element type; but explicit use of <function>array_append</> might
be a preferable solution.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="arrays-searching">