The core of this patch is hash_array() and associated typcache
infrastructure, which works just about exactly like the existing support
for array comparison.
In addition I did some work to ensure that the planner won't think that an
array type is hashable unless its element type is hashable, and similarly
for sorting. This includes adding a datatype parameter to op_hashjoinable
and op_mergejoinable, and adding an explicit "hashable" flag to
SortGroupClause. The lack of a cross-check on the element type was a
pre-existing bug in mergejoin support --- but it didn't matter so much
before, because if you couldn't sort the element type there wasn't any good
alternative to failing anyhow. Now that we have the alternative of hashing
the array type, there are cases where we can avoid a failure by being picky
at the planner stage, so it's time to be picky.
The issue of exactly how to combine the per-element hash values to produce
an array hash is still open for discussion, but the rest of this is pretty
solid, so I'll commit it as-is.
as per my recent proposal:
1. Fold SortClause and GroupClause into a single node type SortGroupClause.
We were already relying on them to be struct-equivalent, so using two node
tags wasn't accomplishing much except to get in the way of comparing items
with equal().
2. Add an "eqop" field to SortGroupClause to carry the associated equality
operator. This is cheap for the parser to get at the same time it's looking
up the sort operator, and storing it eliminates the need for repeated
not-so-cheap lookups during planning. In future this will also let us
represent GROUP/DISTINCT operations on datatypes that have hash opclasses
but no btree opclasses (ie, they have equality but no natural sort order).
The previous representation simply didn't work for that, since its only
indicator of comparison semantics was a sort operator.
3. Add a hasDistinctOn boolean to struct Query to explicitly record whether
the distinctClause came from DISTINCT or DISTINCT ON. This allows removing
some complicated and not 100% bulletproof code that attempted to figure
that out from the distinctClause alone.
This patch doesn't in itself create any new capability, but it's necessary
infrastructure for future attempts to use hash-based grouping for DISTINCT
and UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT.
during parse analysis, not only errors detected in the flex/bison stages.
This is per my earlier proposal. This commit includes all the basic
infrastructure, but locations are only tracked and reported for errors
involving column references, function calls, and operators. More could
be done later but this seems like a good set to start with. I've also
moved the ReportSyntaxErrorPosition logic out of psql and into libpq,
which should make it available to more people --- even within psql this
is an improvement because warnings weren't handled by ReportSyntaxErrorPosition.
(previously we only did = and <> correctly). Also, allow row comparisons
with any operators that are in btree opclasses, not only those with these
specific names. This gets rid of a whole lot of indefensible assumptions
about the behavior of particular operators based on their names ... though
it's still true that IN and NOT IN expand to "= ANY". The patch adds a
RowCompareExpr expression node type, and makes some changes in the
representation of ANY/ALL/ROWCOMPARE SubLinks so that they can share code
with RowCompareExpr.
I have not yet done anything about making RowCompareExpr an indexable
operator, but will look at that soon.
initdb forced due to changes in stored rules.
datatype by array_eq and array_cmp; use this to solve problems with memory
leaks in array indexing support. The parser's equality_oper and ordering_oper
routines also use the cache. Change the operator search algorithms to look
for appropriate btree or hash index opclasses, instead of assuming operators
named '<' or '=' have the right semantics. (ORDER BY ASC/DESC now also look
at opclasses, instead of assuming '<' and '>' are the right things.) Add
several more index opclasses so that there is no regression in functionality
for base datatypes. initdb forced due to catalog additions.
'scalar op ALL (array)', where the operator is applied between the
lefthand scalar and each element of the array. The operator must
yield boolean; the result of the construct is the OR or AND of the
per-element results, respectively.
Original coding by Joe Conway, after an idea of Peter's. Rewritten
by Tom to keep the implementation strictly separate from subqueries.
comparison functions), replacing the highly bogus bitwise array_eq. Create
a btree index opclass for ANYARRAY --- it is now possible to create indexes
on array columns.
Arrange to cache the results of catalog lookups across multiple array
operations, instead of repeating the lookups on every call.
Add string_to_array and array_to_string functions.
Remove singleton_array, array_accum, array_assign, and array_subscript
functions, since these were for proof-of-concept and not intended to become
supported functions.
Minor adjustments to behavior in some corner cases with empty or
zero-dimensional arrays.
Joe Conway (with some editorializing by Tom Lane).
that the types of untyped string-literal constants are deduced (ie,
when coerce_type is applied to 'em, that's what the type must be).
Remove the ancient hack of storing the input Param-types array as a
global variable, and put the info into ParseState instead. This touches
a lot of files because of adjustment of routine parameter lists, but
it's really not a large patch. Note: PREPARE statement still insists on
exact specification of parameter types, but that could easily be relaxed
now, if we wanted to do so.
expressions, ARRAY(sub-SELECT) expressions, some array functions.
Polymorphic functions using ANYARRAY/ANYELEMENT argument and return
types. Some regression tests in place, documentation is lacking.
Joe Conway, with some kibitzing from Tom Lane.
operations: make sure we use operators that are compatible, as determined
by a mergejoin link in pg_operator. Also, add code to planner to ensure
we don't try to use hashed grouping when the grouping operators aren't
marked hashable.
qualified operator names directly, for example CREATE OPERATOR myschema.+
( ... ). To qualify an operator name in an expression you need to write
OPERATOR(myschema.+) (thanks to Peter for suggesting an escape hatch).
I also took advantage of having to reformat pg_operator to fix something
that'd been bugging me for a while: mergejoinable operators should have
explicit links to the associated cross-data-type comparison operators,
rather than hardwiring an assumption that they are named < and >.
1. If there is exactly one pg_operator entry of the right name and oprkind,
oper() and related routines would return that entry whether its input type
had anything to do with the request or not. This is just premature
optimization: we shouldn't return the single candidate until after we verify
that it really is a valid candidate, ie, is at least coercion-compatible
with the given types.
2. oper() and related routines only promise a coercion-compatible result.
Unfortunately, there were quite a few callers that assumed the returned
operator is binary-compatible with the given datatype; they would proceed
to call it without making any datatype coercions. These callers include
sorting, grouping, aggregation, and VACUUM ANALYZE. In general I think
it is appropriate for these callers to require an exact or binary-compatible
match, so I've added a new routine compatible_oper() that only succeeds if
it can find an operator that doesn't require any run-time conversions.
Callers now call oper() or compatible_oper() depending on whether they are
prepared to deal with type conversion or not.
The upshot of these bugs is revealed by the following silliness in PL/Tcl's
selftest: it creates an operator @< on int4, and then tries to use it to
sort a char(N) column. The system would let it do that :-( (and evidently
has done so since 6.3 :-( :-(). The result in this case was just a silly
sort order, but the reverse combination would've provoked coredump from
trying to dereference integers. With this fix you get more reasonable
behavior:
pltcl_test=# select * from T_pkey1 order by key1, key2 using @<;
ERROR: Unable to identify an operator '@<' for types 'bpchar' and 'bpchar'
You will have to retype this query using an explicit cast
maintained for each cache entry. A cache entry will not be freed until
the matching ReleaseSysCache call has been executed. This eliminates
worries about cache entries getting dropped while still in use. See
my posting to pg-hackers of even date for more info.
match then it tried for a self-commutative operator with the reversed input
data types. This is pretty silly; there could never be such an operator,
except maybe in binary-compatible-type scenarios, and we have oper_inexact
for that. Besides which, the oprsanity regress test would complain about
such an operator. Remove nonfunctional code and simplify routine calling
convention accordingly.
Tom Lane