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Thread: Interval - incorrect grammar form

Interval - incorrect grammar form

From
pinker
Date:
Hi,
I've noticed that interval is shown incorrectly (in plural form) when date
is negative:

select age(timestamp '2015-09-01',timestamp '2017-10-02');
gives:
"-2 years -1 *mons* -1 days"

This mistake isn't present when date is positive
select age(now(),'2015-06-07');

"1 *mon* 9 days 11:53:37.567851"

It applies to versions:
"PostgreSQL 9.4.1 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.1.2
20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-55), 64-bit"
and
"PostgreSQL 8.4.17 on i486-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc-4.4.real
(Debian 4.4.5-8) 4.4.5, 32-bit"



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Re: Interval - incorrect grammar form

From
Michael Paquier
Date:
On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 4:56 PM, pinker <pinker@onet.eu> wrote:
> I've noticed that interval is shown incorrectly (in plural form) when date
> is negative:
>
> select age(timestamp '2015-09-01',timestamp '2017-10-02');
> gives:
> "-2 years -1 *mons* -1 days"
>
> This mistake isn't present when date is positive
> select age(now(),'2015-06-07');
>
> "1 *mon* 9 days 11:53:37.567851"
>
> It applies to versions:
> "PostgreSQL 9.4.1 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.1.2
> 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-55), 64-bit"

It behaves like this for ages, and there are some applications that
surely rely on the current behavior, so I am not sure that it is worth
changing now even if that's grammatically incorrect (native
English-speaker wanted here for confirmation).
Regards,
--
Michael

Re: Interval - incorrect grammar form

From
Tom Lane
Date:
Michael Paquier <michael.paquier@gmail.com> writes:
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 4:56 PM, pinker <pinker@onet.eu> wrote:
>> I've noticed that interval is shown incorrectly (in plural form) when date
>> is negative:
>>
>> select age(timestamp '2015-09-01',timestamp '2017-10-02');
>> gives:
>> "-2 years -1 *mons* -1 days"

> It behaves like this for ages, and there are some applications that
> surely rely on the current behavior, so I am not sure that it is worth
> changing now even if that's grammatically incorrect (native
> English-speaker wanted here for confirmation).

Hm, "-1 mon" is probably better than "-1 mons", but it's somewhat
debatable; it's not clear to me that the convention about singular nouns
applies to negative quantities.  And if you were arguing from
native-language conventions then writing "mon" rather than "month"
already feels pretty unnatural.

I tend to agree that backwards compatibility outweighs any benefit
we'd get here.

            regards, tom lane