[PATCH] Simplify SortSupport implementation for macaddr
Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander@tigerdata.com>
From: Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander@tigerdata.com>
To: PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Cc: John Naylor <johncnaylorls@gmail.com>
Date: 2026-02-25T13:05:46Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Attachments
- v1-0001-Simplify-SortSupport-implementation-for-macaddr.patch (text/x-patch) patch v1-0001
Hi, Since Datums are 64-bit values and MAC addresses have only 6 bytes, the abbreviated key contains the entire MAC address and is authoritative, as pointed out by John Naylor [1] This fact eliminates the need for cardinality estimation using HyperLogLog since macaddr_abbrev_convert() is dirt cheap and not lossy. There are no reasons to give up on abbreviation. Potentially we could go even further and pass MAC addresses by value rather by reference [2]. This would eliminate the need of abbreviation completely since SortSupport->comparator could just compare two Datums, as we do for Timestamps. This is a more invasive change though that deserves more discussion and thus not proposed here. [1]: https://postgr.es/m/CANWCAZYWdOEnoL_88VpMge1RtRpBz-VRCjdcu-eA4q3U6LvpDw%40mail.gmail.com [2]: https://postgre.es/m/CAJ7c6TM8up%3DYih8pRLPy4wHwLzHf7w22tQ80-8ZBm__E%3D8_5HA%40mail.gmail.com -- Best regards, Aleksander Alekseev
Commits
-
Simplify SortSupport for the macaddr data type
- 30229be755e7 19 (unreleased) landed