postgreql to_char formatting of a float - postgresql

I have a float which between 0 and 1, e.g 0.342 or 0.34, etc. I need this formatted like so: .XXX, always three digits precision (with trailing zeroes) and never a leading zero (prior to the decimal. I have this:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION format_float(real) RETURNS text AS
$BODY$
BEGIN
return to_char($1, '9.999');
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql VOLATILE COST 100;
But it pads the value with leading spaces. How can I get this working? I have tried '.999' in the to_char call but that doesn't work either, yielding .###

Would simple cast to an arbitrary precision number work for you?
SELECT 0.3456::numeric(4,3);
Same inside a function (btw, better use SQL functions, as optimizer can inline them):
CREATE FUNCTION ff(float) RETURNS numeric(4,3) AS $ff$
SELECT $1::numeric(4,3);
$ff$ LANGUAGE sql;

Related

Understanding difference between int literal vs int parameter in PL/pgSQL function

I have a function to left pad bit stings in PostgreSQL 9.5:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lpad_bits(val bit varying)
RETURNS bit varying as
$BODY$
BEGIN return val::bit(32) >> (32-length(val));
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql IMMUTABLE;
which works fine:
# select lpad_bits(b'1001100111000');
lpad_bits
----------------------------------
00000000000000000001001100111000
(1 row)
My problem is when I try to add a parameter to change the amount of padding:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lpad_bits(val bit varying, sz integer default 1024)
RETURNS bit varying as
$BODY$
BEGIN return val::bit(sz) >> (sz-length(val));
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql IMMUTABLE;
The function is now broken:
# select lpad_bits(b'1001100111000', 32);
ERROR: invalid input syntax for integer: "sz"
LINE 1: SELECT val::bit(sz) >> (sz-length(val))
^
QUERY: SELECT val::bit(sz) >> (sz-length(val))
CONTEXT: PL/pgSQL function lpad_bits(bit varying,integer) line 2 at RETURN
I have stared at the bitstring documentation and PL/pgSQL function documentation, am simply not seeing what is fundamentally different between these two implementations.
Why?
PL/pgSQL executes SQL queries like prepared statements. The manual about parameter substituion:
Prepared statements can take parameters: values that are substituted
into the statement when it is executed.
Note the term values. Only actual values can be parameterized, but not key words, identifiers or type names. 32 in bit(32) looks like a value, but the modifier of a data type is only a "value" internally and can't be parameterized. SQL demands to know data types at planning stage, it cannot wait for the execution stage.
You could achieve your goal with dynamic SQL and EXECUTE. As proof of concept:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lpad_bits(val varbit, sz int = 32, OUT outval varbit) AS
$func$
BEGIN
EXECUTE format('SELECT $1::bit(%s) >> $2', sz) -- literal
USING val, sz - length(val) -- values
INTO outval;
END
$func$ LANGUAGE plpgsql IMMUTABLE;
Call:
SELECT lpad_bits(b'1001100111000', 32);
Note the distinction between sz being used as literal to build the statement and its second occurrence where it's used as value, that can be passed as parameter.
Faster alternatives
A superior solution for this particular task is to just use lpad() like #Abelisto suggested:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lpad_bits2(val varbit, sz int = 32)
RETURNS varbit AS
$func$
SELECT lpad(val::text, sz, '0')::varbit;
$func$ LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE;
(Simpler as plain SQL function, which also allows function inlining in the context of outer queries.)
Several times faster than the above function. A minor flaw: we have to cast to text and back to varbit. Unfortunately, lpad() is not currently implemented for varbit. The manual:
The following SQL-standard functions work on bit strings as well as
character strings: length, bit_length, octet_length, position, substring, overlay.
overlay() is available, we can have a cheaper function:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lpad_bits3(val varbit, base varbit = '00000000000000000000000000000000')
RETURNS varbit AS
$func$
SELECT overlay(base PLACING val FROM bit_length(base) - bit_length(val))
$func$ LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE;
Faster if you can work with varbit values to begin with. (The advantage is (partly) voided, if you have to cast text to varbit anyway.)
Call:
SELECT lpad_bits3(b'1001100111000', '00000000000000000000000000000000');
SELECT lpad_bits3(b'1001100111000', repeat('0', 32)::varbit);
We might overlaod the function with a variant taking an integer to generate base itself:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lpad_bits3(val varbit, sz int = 32)
RETURNS varbit AS
$func$
SELECT overlay(repeat('0', sz)::varbit PLACING val FROM sz - bit_length(val))
$func$ LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE;
Call:
SELECT lpad_bits3(b'1001100111000', 32;
Related:
Postgresql Convert bit varying to integer
Convert hex in text representation to decimal number
The parser does not allow a variable at that place. The alternative is to use a constant and trim it:
select right((val::bit(128) >> (128 -length(val)))::text, sz)::bit(sz)
from (values (b'1001100111000', 32)) s(val,sz)
;
right
----------------------------------
00000000000000000001001100111000
Or the lpad function as suggested in the comments.

Comparing remove white spaces

I have the float value to remove the white space from it.
Here is the following is the example.
In SQL Server: In SQL Server I used the following script.
DECLARE #f1 FLOAT = 74.3658319091568;
SELECT REPLACE(#f1,CHAR(160),'');
--Output
74.3658
PostgreSQL: In postgresql I used the following script.
do
$$
DECLARE
v_f1 float = '74.3658319091568';
v_f3 text;
BEGIN
SELECT regexp_replace(v_f1::varchar, '\s+$', '') INTO v_f3;
Raise info '%',v_f3;
END;
$$
--Output
INFO: 74.3658319091568
I didn't get the result as I get in the SQL Server.
You can try this way
do
$$
DECLARE
v_f1 float8 = '74.3658319091568';
v_f3 text;
BEGIN
SELECT to_char( v_f1, 'FM999999.0000') INTO v_f3;
Raise info '%',v_f3;
END;
$$
FM(prefix) -fill mode (suppress leading zeroes and padding blanks)
Using data type formatting
Your Postgres float is a synonym for real, which has 6 digits precision. In SQL Server a default float has 15 digits precision.
You could use a Postgres double precision which also has 15 digits precision. There is no SQL Server type that has 6 digits precision.
Note: you normally don't get any whitespace when converting a float to a text type. So replacing whitespace is useless (but also harmless.)
Note 2: in SQL Server, when using a fixed-length char, trailing spaces are removed. So REPLACE(#f1,CHAR(160),'') replaces an empty string with an empty string.

How to round REAL type to NUMERIC?

I have table with real column type with example values:
123456,12
0,12345678
And code in stored procedure:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION test3()
RETURNS integer AS
$BODY$
DECLARE
rec RECORD;
BEGIN
FOR rec IN
SELECT
gme.abs_km as km,
CAST(gme.abs_km as numeric) as cast,
round(gme.abs_km:: numeric(16,2), 2) as round
FROM gps_entry gme
LOOP
RAISE NOTICE 'Km: % , cast: % , round: %', rec.km, rec.cast, rec.round;
INSERT INTO test (km, casting, rounding) VALUES (rec.km, rec.cast, rec.round);
END LOOP;
RETURN 1;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE;
Here is output:
2014-02-05 12:49:53 CET NOTICE: Km: 0.12345678 , cast: 0.123457 , round: 0.12
2014-02-05 12:49:53 CET NOTICE: Km: 123456.12 , cast: 123456 , round: 123456.00
DB table with columns NUMERIC(19,2):
km casting rounding
0.12 0.12 0.12
123456.00 123456.00 123456.00
Why do cast and round functions not work for the value 123456.12?
real is a lossy, inexact floating-point type. It only uses 4 bytes for storage and may not store the presented numeric literals precisely to begin with. In addition, implementation details depend on your platform. Consider the chapter "Floating-Point Types" in the manual.
There is nothing wrong with either round() or cast(). For (more) exact results, use numeric.
Function audit
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION test3()
RETURNS void
LANGUAGE plpgsql AS
$func$
DECLARE
r record;
BEGIN
FOR r IN
SELECT abs_km AS km
, cast(abs_km AS numeric) AS km_cast
, round(abs_km::numeric, 2) AS km_round
FROM gps_entry
LOOP
RAISE NOTICE 'km: % , km_cast: % , km_round: %'
, r.km, r.km_cast, r.km_round;
INSERT INTO test (km, casting, rounding)
VALUES (r.km, r.km_cast, r.km_round);
END LOOP;
END
$func$;
Of course, it would be more efficient to replace the loop with a single multi-row INSERT statement.
Do not quote the language name plpgsql. It's an identifier.
Makes no sense to round to 2 fractional digits after casting to numeric(16,2), which forcibly rounds already. Either / or ..
round(abs_km:: numeric(16,2), 2) as round
round(abs_km::numeric, 2) as round
abs_km::numeric(16,2) as round

PostgreSQL: Treat TEXT column as hexadecimal number [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Convert hex in text representation to decimal number
(9 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
I have a table that has a TEXT column which contains hexadecimal numbers.
I now need to represent them as the integers that they really are, but found no
way of doing that (something like to_hex() in reverse).
I am aware that I can convert literal hexadecimal values like this:
SELECT x'DEADBEEF';
But how do I apply something like this if the value to be converted comes from a
column? Concatenating 'x' to the column name obviously doesn't work, because then
it is no longer a string literal.
I found a very ugly function in the PostgreSQL mailing lists which
pieces together a query string such that the function argument is then again a
literal, and then executes that function, but the approach is just downright
perverse---there has to be a better way. At least I hope so, given that the
message is almost ten years old…
Of course, I know that having the value in question stored as an integer in the
database in the first place would be the way to go. But this is not possible in
this case, so I'm stuck with trying to decypher those strings…)
The following functions are roughly the same as the function in that post from the mailing list. In fact, I took them from the mailing list too, but from a newer post. I can't see anything wrong with them. I've used it just once while migrating a small dataset.
Feel free to downvote if you can point anything "perverse" that could potentially derive from its use.
With INTEGER datatype:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION hex_to_int(hexval varchar) RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
result int;
BEGIN
EXECUTE 'SELECT x''' || hexval || '''::int' INTO result;
RETURN result;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' IMMUTABLE STRICT;
With BIGINT datatype:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION hex_to_bigint(hexval varchar) RETURNS bigint AS $$
DECLARE
result bigint;
BEGIN
EXECUTE 'SELECT x''' || hexval || '''::bigint' INTO result;
RETURN result;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' IMMUTABLE STRICT;
Hm, there might be a simpler way to do it.
CREATE FUNCTION from_hex(text) RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
x bytea;
BEGIN
x := decode($1, 'hex');
return (get_byte(x, 0) << 24) | (get_byte(x, 1) << 16) |
(get_byte(x, 2) << 8) | get_byte(x, 3);
END
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
Note that as written, this only works for 8-digit hexadecimal numbers.

Convert bigint to bytea, but swap the byte order

I have a PostgreSQL table that I want to alter a column from bigint to bytea byte to hold more data. I am thinking using the following sequence:
alter table mytable add new_column
update mytable set new_column = int8send(old_column)
alter table drop old_column
alter table rename new_column to old_column
The above sequence works, the only problem is that I want the byte sequence in the bytea to be reversed. For example, if a value in old_column is 0x1234567890abcdef, the above sequence would generate \0224Vx\220\253\315\357, but I want it to be
\357\315\253\220xV4\022. Seems like the resulting bytea uses the big-endian order from originating bigint.
Is there an easy way to do that without writing a program? I was looking for a swap64() sort of function in PostgreSQL but failed to find one.
Here's a pure-SQL function I wrote to reverse the byte-order of a bytea-type value:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION reverse_bytes_iter(bytes bytea, length int, midpoint int, index int)
RETURNS bytea AS
$$
SELECT CASE WHEN index >= midpoint THEN bytes ELSE
reverse_bytes_iter(
set_byte(
set_byte(bytes, index, get_byte(bytes, length-index)),
length-index, get_byte(bytes, index)
),
length, midpoint, index + 1
)
END;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE;
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION reverse_bytes(bytes bytea) RETURNS bytea AS
'SELECT reverse_bytes_iter(bytes, octet_length(bytes)-1, octet_length(bytes)/2, 0)'
LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE;
I just wrote it yesterday, so it's not particularly well-tested nor optimized, but it seems to work, at least on byte strings up to 1k in length.
It is possible to byte-swap without plpgsql code using regexp extractions on the hexadecimal representation.
Here's an example to swap a bigint constant, assuming SET standard_conforming_strings to ON (the default with PG 9.1)
select regexp_replace( lpad(to_hex(x'123456789abcd'::bigint),16,'0'),
'(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)',
'\8\7\6\5\4\3\2\1');
It returns cdab896745230100. Then apply decode(value, 'hex') to convert that to a bytea.
The whole type conversion could actually be done in a single SQL statement:
ALTER TABLE mytable ALTER COLUMN old_column TYPE bytea
USING decode(
regexp_replace( lpad(to_hex(old_column), 16,'0'),
'(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)(\w\w)',
'\8\7\6\5\4\3\2\1')
, 'hex');
I am playing with pageinspect module now, and I was also curios how to change byte order of an existing bytea value, which pretty much matches your case.
I've come up with the following function:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION reverse(bytea) RETURNS bytea AS $reverse$
SELECT string_agg(byte,''::bytea)
FROM (
SELECT substr($1,i,1) byte
FROM generate_series(length($1),1,-1) i) s
$reverse$ LANGUAGE sql;
It's pretty straightforward and works similar to textual reverse() function:
WITH v(val) AS (
VALUES ('\xaabbccdd'::bytea),('\x0123456789abcd'::bytea)
)
SELECT val, reverse(val)
FROM v;
This function, while not exactly what you're looking for, should help you get on your way.
The source code from that function is reproduced verbatim below.
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION utils.int_littleendian(v_number integer)
RETURNS bytea AS
$BODY$
DECLARE
v_textresult bytea;
v_temp int;
v_int int;
v_i int = 0;
BEGIN
v_int = v_number;
v_textresult = '1234';
WHILE(v_i < 4) LOOP
raise notice 'loop %',v_int;
v_temp := v_int%256;
v_int := v_int - v_temp;
v_int := v_int / 256;
SELECT set_byte(v_textresult,v_i,v_temp) INTO v_textresult;
v_i := v_i + 1;
END LOOP;
return v_textresult;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE
COST 100;