Ought binary literals to allow spaces?
Hi,
ISO seems to allow spaces among the digits of a binary literal, so as
to group them for readability, as in X'00ba b10c'. We seem not to.
(The B'...' form appears to be a PostgreSQL extension, but I imagine
if ISO had it, it would allow spaces too.)
Is it worthwhile to allow that? Or to add a compatibility note somewhere
around sql-syntax-bit-strings saying we don't allow it?
For comparison, byteain does allow grouping whitespace.
It seems that byteain allows arbitrary whitespace (tabs, newlines, etc.),
whereas ISO's X'...' allows exactly and only U+0020 space characters.
Whitespace for byteain must occur between digit pairs; spaces in X'...'
per ISO can be anywhere.
Regards,
-Chap
Chapman Flack <chap@anastigmatix.net> writes:
ISO seems to allow spaces among the digits of a binary literal, so as
to group them for readability, as in X'00ba b10c'. We seem not to.
Hmm. SQL99 did not allow noise spaces in <binary string literal> and
related productions, but it does look like they added that in SQL:2008.
(The B'...' form appears to be a PostgreSQL extension, but I imagine
if ISO had it, it would allow spaces too.)
The B'...' form was there in SQL99. The committee took it out in
SQL:2003 or so, along with the BIT type, but we still have both.
regards, tom lane