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

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>

From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>, Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2020-09-30T17:56:42Z
Lists: pgsql-bugs, pgsql-hackers
On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 01:26:29PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > On Fri, Sep  4, 2020 at 12:45:36PM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
> >>> 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.
> 
> I think this is nuts.  The current behavior is obviously broken;
> we should just treat it as a bug and fix it, including back-patching.
> I do not think there is a compatibility problem of any significance.
> Who out there is going to have an application that is relying on the
> ability to insert BC dates in this way?

You are agreeing with what I am suggesting then?

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

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




Commits

  1. Fix handling of BC years in to_date/to_timestamp.

  2. Fix make_timestamp[tz] to accept negative years as meaning BC.

  3. doc: PG 13 relnotes, update TOAST item to mention decompression