Re: [PATCH] Introduce array_shuffle() and array_sample()

Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>

From: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Martin Kalcher <martin.kalcher@aboutsource.net>, Fabien COELHO <coelho@cri.ensmp.fr>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Dean Rasheed <dean.a.rasheed@gmail.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>, John Naylor <john.naylor@enterprisedb.com>, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2023-04-03T21:52:31Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers, pgsql-general
> On 3 Apr 2023, at 23:46, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> 
> Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:
>> On 29 Sep 2022, at 21:33, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>>> I find this behavior a bit surprising:
>>> 
>>> +SELECT array_dims(array_sample('[-1:2][2:3]={{1,2},{3,NULL},{5,6},{7,8}}'::int[], 3));
>>> + array_dims  
>>> +-------------
>>> + [-1:1][2:3]
>>> +(1 row)
>>> 
>>> I can buy preserving the lower bound in array_shuffle(), but
>>> array_sample() is not preserving the first-dimension indexes of
>>> the array, so ISTM it ought to reset the first lower bound to 1.
> 
>> I might be daft but I'm not sure I follow why not preserving here, can you
>> explain?
> 
> Because array_sample selects only some of the (first level) array
> elements, those elements are typically not going to have the same
> indexes in the output as they did in the input.  So I don't see why
> it would be useful to preserve the same lower-bound index.  It does
> make sense to preserve the lower-order index bounds ([2:3] in this
> example) because we are including or not including those array
> slices as a whole.

Ah, ok, now I see what you mean, thanks!  I'll try to fix up the patch like
this tomorrow.

--
Daniel Gustafsson




Commits

  1. Add array_sample() and array_shuffle() functions.

  2. Use a separate random seed for SQL random()/setseed() functions.