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Previously, floating-point output was done by rounding to a specific
decimal precision; by default, to 6 or 15 decimal digits (losing
information) or as requested using extra_float_digits. Drivers that
wanted exact float values, and applications like pg_dump that must
preserve values exactly, set extra_float_digits=3 (or sometimes 2 for
historical reasons, though this isn't enough for float4).
Unfortunately, decimal rounded output is slow enough to become a
noticable bottleneck when dealing with large result sets or COPY of
large tables when many floating-point values are involved.
Floating-point output can be done much faster when the output is not
rounded to a specific decimal length, but rather is chosen as the
shortest decimal representation that is closer to the original float
value than to any other value representable in the same precision. The
recently published Ryu algorithm by Ulf Adams is both relatively
simple and remarkably fast.
Accordingly, change float4out/float8out to output shortest decimal
representations if extra_float_digits is greater than 0, and make that
the new default. Applications that need rounded output can set
extra_float_digits back to 0 or below, and take the resulting
performance hit.
We make one concession to portability for systems with buggy
floating-point input: we do not output decimal values that fall
exactly halfway between adjacent representable binary values (which
would rely on the reader doing round-to-nearest-even correctly). This
is known to be a problem at least for VS2013 on Windows.
Our version of the Ryu code originates from
https://github.com/ulfjack/ryu/ at commit c9c3fb1979, but with the
following (significant) modifications:
- Output format is changed to use fixed-point notation for small
exponents, as printf would, and also to use lowercase 'e', a
minimum of 2 exponent digits, and a mandatory sign on the exponent,
to keep the formatting as close as possible to previous output.
- The output of exact midpoint values is disabled as noted above.
- The integer fast-path code is changed somewhat (since we have
fixed-point output and the upstream did not).
- Our project style has been largely applied to the code with the
exception of C99 declaration-after-statement, which has been
retained as an exception to our present policy.
- Most of upstream's debugging and conditionals are removed, and we
use our own configure tests to determine things like uint128
availability.
Changing the float output format obviously affects a number of
regression tests. This patch uses an explicit setting of
extra_float_digits=0 for test output that is not expected to be
exactly reproducible (e.g. due to numerical instability or differing
algorithms for transcendental functions).
Conversions from floats to numeric are unchanged by this patch. These
may appear in index expressions and it is not yet clear whether any
change should be made, so that can be left for another day.
This patch assumes that the only supported floating point format is
now IEEE format, and the documentation is updated to reflect that.
Code by me, adapting the work of Ulf Adams and other contributors.
References:
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3192369
Reviewed-by: Tom Lane, Andres Freund, Donald Dong
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/87r2el1bx6.fsf@news-spur.riddles.org.uk
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