Porting from PostgreSQL

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Although CockroachDB supports PostgreSQL syntax and drivers, it does not offer exact compatibility. This page documents the known list of differences between PostgreSQL and CockroachDB for identical input. That is, a SQL statement of the type listed here will behave differently than in PostgreSQL. Porting an existing application to CockroachDB will require changing these expressions.

Note that some of these differences only apply to rare inputs, and so no change will be needed, even if the listed feature is being used. In these cases, it is safe to ignore the porting instructions.

Overflow of float

In PostgreSQL, the float type returns an error when it overflows or an expression would return Infinity:

postgres=# select 1e300::float * 1e10::float;
ERROR:  value out of range: overflow
postgres=#  select pow(0::float, -1::float);
ERROR:  zero raised to a negative power is undefined

In CockroachDB, these expressions instead return Infinity:

SELECT 1e300::float * 1e10::float;

+----------------------------+
| 1e300::FLOAT * 1e10::FLOAT |
+----------------------------+
| +Inf                       |
+----------------------------+

SELECT pow(0::float, -1::float);

+---------------------------+
| pow(0::FLOAT, - 1::FLOAT) |
+---------------------------+
| +Inf                      |
+---------------------------+

Precedence of unary ~

In PostgreSQL, the unary ~ (bitwise not) operator has a low precedence. For example, the following query is parsed as ~ (1 + 2) because ~ has a lower precedence than +:

SELECT ~1 + 2

In CockroachDB, unary ~ has the same (high) precedence as unary -, so the above expression will be parsed as (~1) + 2.

Porting instructions: Manually add parentheses around expressions that depend on the PostgreSQL behavior.

Precedence of bitwise operators

In PostgreSQL, the operators | (bitwise OR), # (bitwise XOR), and & (bitwise AND) all have the same precedence.

In CockroachDB, the precedence from highest to lowest is: &, #, |.

Porting instructions: Manually add parentheses around expressions that depend on the PostgreSQL behavior.

Integer division

In PostgreSQL, division of integers results in an integer. For example, the following query returns 1, since the 1 / 2 is truncated to 0:

SELECT 1 + 1 / 2

In CockroachDB, integer division results in a decimal. CockroachDB instead provides the // operator to perform floor division.

Porting instructions: Change / to // in integer division where the result must be an integer.

Shift argument modulo

In PostgreSQL, the shift operators (<<, >>) sometimes modulo their second argument to the bit size of the underlying type. For example, the following query results in a 1 because the int type is 32 bits, and 32 % 32 is 0, so this is the equivalent of 1 << 0:

SELECT 1::int << 32

In CockroachDB, no such modulo is performed.

Porting instructions: Manually add a modulo to the second argument. Also note that CockroachDB's INT type is always 64 bits. For example:

SELECT 1::int << (x % 64)

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