We currently use Name sometimes, and char* other times to store
relation, attribute, type, and view names.

One thing Mariposa did was to make that more consistent, so you passed
around Name(NameData pointers) instead of the more generic char *.
However, the Name fields behave like char*, but are clearer.

	typedef struct nameData
	{
	    char        data[NAMEDATALEN];
	} NameData;
	typedef NameData *Name;

Do people see value in making this switch?  Would take me a few hours to
make the change.

-- 
Bruce Momjian                          |  830 Blythe Avenue
maillist@candle.pha.pa.us              |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  (610) 353-9879(w)
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  (610) 853-3000(h)

Mon, 20 Jul 1998 00:48:58 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
Name type vs. char *
> We currently use Name sometimes, and char* other times to store
> relation, attribute, type, and view names.
> 
> One thing Mariposa did was to make that more consistent, so you passed
> around Name(NameData pointers) instead of the more generic char *.
> However, the Name fields behave like char*, but are clearer.
> 
> 	typedef struct nameData
> 	{
> 	    char        data[NAMEDATALEN];
> 	} NameData;
> 	typedef NameData *Name;
> 
> Do people see value in making this switch?  Would take me a few hours to
> make the change.

I have decided I don't even like this change.  The confusion is because
of the on-disk name storage vs. query-supplied names.  I will add this
to the developers FAQ.  This has confused me, so I assume others may be
confused about the distinction.

Comments?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why are table, column, type, function, view names sometimes referenced
as Name or NameData, and sometimes as char *?

Table, column, type, function, and view names are stored in system
tables in columns of type Name.  Name is a fixed-length, null-terminated
type of NAMEDATALEN bytes.  (The default value for NAMEDATALEN is 32
bytes.)

	typedef struct nameData
	{
	    char        data[NAMEDATALEN];
	} NameData;
	typedef NameData *Name;

Table, column, type, function, and view names that come in to the
backend via user queries are stored as variable-length, null-terminated
character strings.

Many functions are called with both types of names, ie. heap_open(). 
Because the Name type is null-terminated, it is safe to pass it to a
function expecting a char *.  Because there are many cases where on-disk
names(Name) are compared to user-supplied names(char *), there are many
cases where Name and char * are coerced to match each other.


-- 
Bruce Momjian                          |  830 Blythe Avenue
maillist@candle.pha.pa.us              |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  (610) 353-9879(w)
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  (610) 853-3000(h)

Mon, 20 Jul 1998 05:37:14 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Name type vs. char *