Re: BUG #16419: wrong parsing BC year in to_date() function

On Fri, Sep  4, 2020 at 12:45:36PM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 6:21 PM Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
> 
>     On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 09:26:53AM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
> 
>     > Whether to actually change the behavior of to_date is up for debate
>     though I
>     > would presume it would not be back-patched.
> 
>     OK, so, looking at this thread, we have to_date() treating -1 as -2 BC,
>     make_date() treating -1 as 1 BC, and we have Oracle, which to_date() is
>     supposed to match, making -1 as 1 BC.
> 
>     Because we already have the to_date/make_date inconsistency, and the -1
>     to -2 BC mapping is confusing, and doesn't match Oracle, I think the
>     clean solution is to change PG 14 to treat -1 as 1 BC, and document the
>     incompatibility in the release notes.
> 
> 
> I agree that someone else should write another patch to fix the behavior for
> v14.  Still suggest committing the proposed patch to master and all supported
> versions to document the existing behavior correctly.  The fix patch can work
> from that.

I think we need to apply the patches to all branches at the same time. 
I am not sure we want to document a behavior we know will change in PG
14.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             https://enterprisedb.com

  The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee