Martijn van Oosterhout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Sun, May 06, 2007 at 08:48:28PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: >> What we've basically got here is a complaint that the default >> textual-representation-based method for transmitting PL function >> parameters and results is awkward and inefficient for bytea.
> I must say I was indeed surprised by the idea that bytea is passed by > text, since Perl handles embedded nulls in strings without any problem > at all. Does this mean integers are passed as text also? Pretty much everything is passed as text. This is a historical accident, in part: our first PL with an external interpreter was pltcl, and Tcl of the day had no other variable type besides "text string". (They've gotten smarter since then, but from a user's-eye point of view it's still true that every value in Tcl is a string.) So it was natural to decree that the value transmission protocol was just to convert to text and back with the SQL datatype I/O functions. Later PLs copied that decision without thinking hard about it. We've wedged a few bits of custom transmission protocol into plperl for arrays and records, but it's been pretty ad-hoc each time. Seems it's time to take a step back and question the assumptions. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match