Documentation for numeric/decimal type does not say that precision can be specified without scale

Started by PG Bug reporting formabout 8 years ago2 messagesdocs
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#1PG Bug reporting form
noreply@postgresql.org

The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:

Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/datatype.html
Description:

The documentation for the numeric/decimal type does not say that the
precision parameter can be specified without specifying a scale, e.g.
numeric(10) is valid.

#2Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: PG Bug reporting form (#1)
Re: Documentation for numeric/decimal type does not say that precision can be specified without scale

=?utf-8?q?PG_Doc_comments_form?= <noreply@postgresql.org> writes:

The documentation for the numeric/decimal type does not say that the
precision parameter can be specified without specifying a scale, e.g.
numeric(10) is valid.

Where are you looking exactly? What I see under 8.1.2 is

Both the maximum precision and the maximum scale of a numeric column
can be configured. To declare a column of type numeric use the syntax:

NUMERIC(precision, scale)

The precision must be positive, the scale zero or
positive. Alternatively:

NUMERIC(precision)

selects a scale of 0. Specifying:

NUMERIC

without any precision or scale creates a column in which numeric
values of any precision and scale can be stored, up to the
implementation limit on precision. A column of this kind will not
coerce input values to any particular scale, whereas numeric columns
with a declared scale will coerce input values to that scale. (The SQL
standard requires a default scale of 0, i.e., coercion to integer
precision. We find this a bit useless. If you're concerned about
portability, always specify the precision and scale explicitly.)

regards, tom lane