aad663a0b4
Previously, convert_one_string_to_scalar() would examine up to 20 bytes of the input string, producing a scalar conversion with theoretical precision far greater than is of any possible use considering the other limitations on the accuracy of the resulting selectivity estimate. (I think this choice might pre-date the caller-level logic that strips any common prefix of the strings; before that, there could have been value in scanning the strings far enough to use all the precision available in a double.) Aside from wasting cycles to little purpose, this choice meant that the "denom" variable could grow to as much as 256^21 = 3.74e50, which could overflow in some non-IEEE float arithmetics. While we don't really support any machines with non-IEEE arithmetic anymore, this still seems like quite an unnecessary platform dependency. Limit the scan to 12 bytes instead, thus limiting "denom" to 256^13 = 2.03e31, a value more likely to be computable everywhere. Per testing by Greg Stark, which showed overflow failures in our standard regression tests on VAX.
PostgreSQL Database Management System ===================================== This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL database management system. PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions. This distribution also contains C language bindings. PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here: http://www.postgresql.org/download See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install PostgreSQL. That file also lists supported operating systems and hardware platforms and contains information regarding any other software packages that are required to build or run the PostgreSQL system. Copyright and license information can be found in the file COPYRIGHT. A comprehensive documentation set is included in this distribution; it can be read as described in the installation instructions. The latest version of this software may be obtained at http://www.postgresql.org/download/. For more information look at our web site located at http://www.postgresql.org/.