Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> writes:
> I think it would be good to use a non-zero value here. We're doing a
> lot of poking into raw bytes here, and if something goes wrong, a zero
> value is more likely to look like something normal than whatever else.
> I suggest picking a value where all 8 bytes are the same, but not
> zero, and ideally chosen so that they don't look much like any of the
> surrounding bytes.
Actually, it seems like we can let pack/unpack deal with byte-swapping
within 32-bit words; what we lose by not using 'q' format is just the
ability to correctly swap the two 32-bit words. Hence, any value in
which upper and lower halves are the same should work, say
0x1234567812345678.
regards, tom lane
