Fix constant-folding of ROW(...) IS [NOT] NULL with composite fields.

The SQL standard appears to specify that IS [NOT] NULL's tests of field
nullness are non-recursive, ie, we shouldn't consider that a composite
field with value ROW(NULL,NULL) is null for this purpose.
ExecEvalNullTest got this right, but eval_const_expressions did not,
leading to weird inconsistencies depending on whether the expression
was such that the planner could apply constant folding.

Also, adjust the docs to mention that IS [NOT] DISTINCT FROM NULL can be
used as a substitute test if a simple null check is wanted for a rowtype
argument.  That motivated reordering things so that IS [NOT] DISTINCT FROM
is described before IS [NOT] NULL.  In HEAD, I went a bit further and added
a table showing all the comparison-related predicates.

Per bug #14235.  Back-patch to all supported branches, since it's certainly
undesirable that constant-folding should change the semantics.

Report and patch by Andrew Gierth; assorted wordsmithing and revised
regression test cases by me.

Report: <20160708024746.1410.57282@wrigleys.postgresql.org>

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/executor/execQual.c b/src/backend/executor/execQual.c
index ebc6a3f1500..ea8850e12cf 100644
--- a/src/backend/executor/execQual.c
+++ b/src/backend/executor/execQual.c
@@ -3701,6 +3701,21 @@ ExecEvalNullTest(NullTestState *nstate,
 
 	if (ntest->argisrow && !(*isNull))
 	{
+		/*
+		 * The SQL standard defines IS [NOT] NULL for a non-null rowtype
+		 * argument as:
+		 *
+		 * "R IS NULL" is true if every field is the null value.
+		 *
+		 * "R IS NOT NULL" is true if no field is the null value.
+		 *
+		 * This definition is (apparently intentionally) not recursive; so our
+		 * tests on the fields are primitive attisnull tests, not recursive
+		 * checks to see if they are all-nulls or no-nulls rowtypes.
+		 *
+		 * The standard does not consider the possibility of zero-field rows,
+		 * but here we consider them to vacuously satisfy both predicates.
+		 */
 		HeapTupleHeader tuple;
 		Oid			tupType;
 		int32		tupTypmod;