On 10/20/06, Jeremy Drake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I noticed something odd when trying to use the row-wise comparison
mentioned in the release notes for 8.2 and in the docs
http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/functions-comparisons.html#ROW-WISE-COMPARISON

This sets up a suitable test:

create type myrowtype AS (a integer, b integer);
create table myrowtypetable (rowval myrowtype);

insert into myrowtypetable select (a, b)::myrowtype from
    generate_series(1,5) a, generate_series(1,5) b;

First I get this error:

select rowval < rowval from myrowtypetable ;
ERROR:  operator does not exist: myrowtype < myrowtype
LINE 1: select rowval < rowval from myrowtypetable ;
                      ^
HINT:  No operator matches the given name and argument type(s). You may
need to add explicit type casts.

OK, I guess I can live with that.  I did create a new type, and there are
no operators for it...

Now, I can do the following (pointless) query
select ROW((rowval).*) < ROW((rowval).*) from myrowtypetable ;

and I get 25 rows of 'f'.  So far so good.

But if I try to do
select rowval from myrowtypetable ORDER BY ROW((rowval).*);
ERROR:  could not identify an ordering operator for type record
HINT:  Use an explicit ordering operator or modify the query.

or even
select rowval from myrowtypetable ORDER BY ROW((rowval).*) USING <;
ERROR:  operator does not exist: record < record
HINT:  No operator matches the given name and argument type(s). You may
need to add explicit type casts.

I know that that less-than operator exists, because I just used it in the
query that worked above.  It seems that ORDER BY just can't find it for
some reason.

Is it supposed to not work in order by?  That doesn't really make sense to
me why order by should be special for this.

that would be neat.  i know that row construction and comparison as
currently implemented is sql standard...is the stuff you are
suggesting also standard? (im guessing no).

I'll throw something else on the pile:

esilo=# select (foo).* from foo order by (foo).*;
ERROR:  column foo.* does not exist

esilo=# select (foo).* from foo;
a | b | c
---+---+---
(0 rows)

seems a little contradictory...

note jeremy that the more common use of row comparison would be to
construct rows on the fly, usually on fields comprising a key with an
explicit order by:

select a,b,c from foo where (a,b,c) > (1,2,3) order by a,b,c;

works fine

merlin

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