Horton

get rid of Pointer type, mostly

Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>

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From: Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>
To: pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2025-11-24T10:20:56Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. Remove no longer needed casts from Pointer

  2. Remove no longer needed casts to Pointer

  3. Change Pointer to void *

  4. Don't rely on pointer arithmetic with Pointer type

  5. Use more appropriate DatumGet* function

  6. Remove useless casts to Pointer

Attachments

In a previous thread[0], the question was asked, 'Why do we bother with 
a "Pointer" type?'.  So I looked into get rid of it.

There are two stages to this.  One is changing all code that wants to do 
pointer arithmetic to use char * instead of relying on Pointer being 
char *.  Then we can change Pointer to be void * and remove a bunch of 
casts.

The second is getting rid of uses of Pointer for variables where you 
might as well use void * directly.  These are actually not that many.

This gets rid of all uses, except in the GIN code, which is full of 
Pointer use, and it's part of the documented API.  I'm not touching 
that, not least because this kind of code

     Pointer   **extra_data = (Pointer **) PG_GETARG_POINTER(4);

needs more brain-bending to understand that I'm prepared to spend.  So 
as far as I'm concerned, the pointer type can continue to exist as a 
curiosity of the GIN API, but in all other places, it wasn't really 
doing much of anything anyway.


[0]: 
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CA%2BhUKG%2BNFKnr%3DK4oybwDvT35dW%3DVAjAAfiuLxp%2B5JeZSOV3nBg%40mail.gmail.com