As we used to say at HP, this is not a bug, it's a definition disagreement. You need to give a coherent argument why we should change, not just claim it's wrong.
Additionally, this behavior was discussed during the 7.4 development and beta cycles on at least a couple occassions -- that would have been the time to complain, not now. For example, see this thread during beta:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-07/msg00747.php
Given the present lack of support for null elements in arrays, it's impossible to have any really pleasant behavior in cases like this. But I don't see an inherent reason why "raise an error" is better than "return a null array".
In fact, the above referenced thread shows a scenario where the former behavior is unpleasant.
I think Joe Conway is planning to tackle that underlying misfeature for 7.5. Whenever it happens, it will result in a number of behavioral changes for arrays. I'm not eager to move the definition around in the meantime, especially not in dot-releases.
Agreed. This and a few other changes to bring us closer to SQL99/SQL2003 compliance (see this thread:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-06/msg01167.php
) will cause some reasonably significant behavioral changes.
Joe
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