Hi. Building on the [type]_larger and _smaller functions (and lifting from the documentation), I put together a couple of functions that will take any number of arguments:
CREATE FUNCTION largest(VARIADIC anyarray) RETURNS anyelement AS $$ SELECT max($1[i]) FROM generate_subscripts($1, 1) g(i); $$ LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE; CREATE FUNCTION smallest(VARIADIC anyarray) RETURNS anyelement AS $$ SELECT min($1[i]) FROM generate_subscripts($1, 1) g(i); $$ LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE; So far so good. I can do smallest(2,4,7), etc. But to take this a convenient step further, sometimes I want the smallest or largest from values already in an array. So I can create these functions: CREATE FUNCTION largest_from_array(anyarray) RETURNS anyelement AS $$ SELECT max($1[i]) FROM generate_subscripts($1, 1) g(i); $$ LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE; CREATE FUNCTION smallest_from_array(anyarray) RETURNS anyelement AS $$ SELECT min($1[i]) FROM generate_subscripts($1, 1) g(i); $$ LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE; That works, but ideally I'd like both of these function sets to have the same name, and work whether called with an array or a set of values. I tried with CREATE FUNCTION largest(VARIADIC anynonarray) but get: ERROR: VARIADIC parameter must be an array So here's my questions: 1) Is there any way to collapse those four functions into two? (Or is there a better way to go about this?) 2) Is there any particular reason functions like that aren't built into Postgres? They seem like they would be useful. (Or maybe I missed them?) 3) Bonus question--how come all the existing _larger and _smaller functions are specific to each data type, as opposed to more general smaller/larger functions? TIA! Ken -- AGENCY Software A Free Software data system By and for non-profits *http://agency-software.org/ <http://agency-software.org/>* *https://demo.agency-software.org/client <https://demo.agency-software.org/client>* ken.tan...@agency-software.org (253) 245-3801 Subscribe to the mailing list <agency-general-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net?body=subscribe> to learn more about AGENCY or follow the discussion.
