Delivery-Date: Fri, 13 May 94 16:18:03 -0700
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Resent-Message-Id: <199405132005.NAA22331@nobozo.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: owner-postman@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 13:03:54 -0700
From: Keith Sklower <sklower@vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
Message-Id: <199405132003.NAA13996@vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
To: ren@math.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: About "Queries over variable sized arrays" too!
Cc: postgres@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Resent-To: postgres-redist@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Resent-Date: Fri, 13 May 94 13:05:30 -0700
Resent-XMts: smtp

I shoulda looked before I leaped.  I spent 3 hours which I didn't
have writing the document .... sorry.

I also now just spent 20 minutes looking at the 4.1 code.
4.1 arrays have to fit in a page, aren't multidimensional, and can't
be backed by large objects.
It appears, from looking at the older version of arrayfuncs.c
that as before the first 4 bytes is a 32 bit integer telling you
the total size of the array (as with any other varlena).
The array elements may be a fixed size of either 1,2,or4 bytes in
which case you can do the calculation easy enough, or it assumed
to be variable length, in which case you have to walk through
the array (as a sequence of varlena's).
I urge you in the strongest possible terms to upgrade to 4.2;
very large numbers of bugs were fixed, and the support for arrays
is much better and more flexible.

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