Reduce "X = X" to "X IS NOT NULL", if it's easy to do so.
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Reduce "X = X" to "X IS NOT NULL", if it's easy to do so. If the operator is a strict btree equality operator, and X isn't volatile, then the clause must yield true for any non-null value of X, or null if X is null. At top level of a WHERE clause, we can ignore the distinction between false and null results, so it's valid to simplify the clause to "X IS NOT NULL". This is a useful improvement mainly because we'll get a far better selectivity estimate in most cases. Because such cases seldom arise in well-written queries, it is unappetizing to expend a lot of planner cycles looking for them ... but it turns out that there's a place we can shoehorn this in practically for free, because equivclass.c already has to detect and reject candidate equivalences of the form X = X. That doesn't catch every place that it would be valid to simplify to X IS NOT NULL, but it catches the typical case. Working harder doesn't seem justified. Patch by me, reviewed by Petr Jelinek Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAMjNa7cC4X9YR-vAJS-jSYCajhRDvJQnN7m2sLH1wLh-_Z2bsw@mail.gmail.com
Files
| Path | Change | +/− |
|---|---|---|
| src/backend/optimizer/path/equivclass.c | modified | +52 −14 |
| src/backend/optimizer/plan/initsplan.c | modified | +3 −2 |
| src/include/optimizer/paths.h | modified | +2 −1 |
| src/test/regress/expected/equivclass.out | modified | +18 −0 |
| src/test/regress/sql/equivclass.sql | modified | +8 −0 |
Discussion
- Discussion on missing optimizations 33 messages · 2017-10-07 → 2017-10-22