Bug in CREATE OPERATOR

Started by Christopher Kings-Lynneabout 25 years ago3 messages
#1Christopher Kings-Lynne
chriskl@familyhealth.com.au

As part of our development, one of our programmers created a new database
type, plus operators and functions to go with it. One of the things he did
was this:

CREATE OPERATOR testbit (
leftarg = bitset,
rightarg = int4,
procedure = testbit,
commutator = testbit
);

Notice that this is an ILLEGAL type - the name of the type (from docs) must
only contain these characters:

+ - * / < > = ~ ! @ # % ^ & | ` ? $

However, PostgreSQL 7.0.3 went right ahead and created the operator anyway!!

Now we have a big problem, as the DROP OPERATOR command cannot delete the
illegally named operator.

eg:

usa=# drop operator testbit (bitset, int4);
ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "testbit "
usa=# drop operator 'testbit ' (bitset, int4);
ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "'"
usa=# drop operator "testbit " (bitset, int4);
ERROR: parser: parse error at or near """

We can't delete it!!! I also assume that it was a bug that it could even be
created in the first place...

Chris

--
Christopher Kings-Lynne
Family Health Network (ACN 089 639 243)

#2Darren King
darrenk@insightdist.com
In reply to: Christopher Kings-Lynne (#1)
RE: Bug in CREATE OPERATOR

CREATE OPERATOR testbit (
leftarg = bitset,
rightarg = int4,
procedure = testbit,
commutator = testbit
);

Now we have a big problem, as the DROP OPERATOR command
cannot delete the illegally named operator.

Have you tried deleting it directly from pg_operator instead of using
DROP OPERATOR?

Darren

#3Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Christopher Kings-Lynne (#1)
Re: Bug in CREATE OPERATOR

"Christopher Kings-Lynne" <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:

[ "CREATE OPERATOR testbit" is accepted ]

Not only that, but it looks like you can create aggregate functions and
types that have operator-like names :-(. Someone was way too eager to
save a production or two, I think:

DefineStmt: CREATE def_type def_name definition
{
...
}
;

def_type: OPERATOR { $$ = OPERATOR; }
| TYPE_P { $$ = TYPE_P; }
| AGGREGATE { $$ = AGGREGATE; }
;

def_name: PROCEDURE { $$ = "procedure"; }
| JOIN { $$ = "join"; }
| all_Op { $$ = $1; }
| ColId { $$ = $1; }
;

Seems to me that this should be simplified down to

CREATE OPERATOR all_Op ...

CREATE TYPE ColId ...

CREATE AGGREGATE ColId ...

Any objections? Has anyone got an idea why PROCEDURE and JOIN are
special-cased here? PROCEDURE, at least, could be promoted from
ColLabel to ColId were it not offered as an alternative to ColId here.

Now we have a big problem, as the DROP OPERATOR command cannot delete the
illegally named operator.

Just remove it by DELETEing the row from pg_operator.

regards, tom lane