Fix old bug with coercing the result of a COLLATE expression.

There are hacks in parse_coerce.c to push down a requested coercion
to below any CollateExpr that may appear.  However, we did that even
if the requested data type is non-collatable, leading to an invalid
expression tree in which CollateExpr is applied to a non-collatable
type.  The fix is just to drop the CollateExpr altogether, reasoning
that it's useless.

This bug is ten years old, dating to the original addition of
COLLATE support.  The lack of field complaints suggests that there
aren't a lot of user-visible consequences.  We noticed the problem
because it would trigger an assertion in DefineVirtualRelation if
the invalid structure appears as an output column of a view; however,
in a non-assert build, you don't see a crash just a (subtly incorrect)
complaint about applying collation to a non-collatable type.  I found
that by putting the incorrect structure further down in a view, I could
make a view definition that would fail dump/reload, per the added
regression test case.  But CollateExpr doesn't do anything at run-time,
so this likely doesn't lead to any really exciting consequences.

Per report from Yulin Pei.  Back-patch to all supported branches.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/HK0PR01MB22744393C474D503E16C8509F4709@HK0PR01MB2274.apcprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com

1 files changed, 18 insertions, 11 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/parser/parse_coerce.c b/src/backend/parser/parse_coerce.c
index 903478d8ca7..eae888e5011 100644
--- a/src/backend/parser/parse_coerce.c
+++ b/src/backend/parser/parse_coerce.c
@@ -95,6 +95,7 @@ coerce_to_target_type(ParseState *pstate, Node *expr, Oid exprtype,
 	 * *must* know that to avoid possibly calling hide_coercion_node on
 	 * something that wasn't generated by coerce_type.  Note that if there are
 	 * multiple stacked CollateExprs, we just discard all but the topmost.
+	 * Also, if the target type isn't collatable, we discard the CollateExpr.
 	 */
 	origexpr = expr;
 	while (expr && IsA(expr, CollateExpr))
@@ -114,7 +115,7 @@ coerce_to_target_type(ParseState *pstate, Node *expr, Oid exprtype,
 								ccontext, cformat, location,
 								(result != expr && !IsA(result, Const)));
 
-	if (expr != origexpr)
+	if (expr != origexpr && type_is_collatable(targettype))
 	{
 		/* Reinstall top CollateExpr */
 		CollateExpr *coll = (CollateExpr *) origexpr;
@@ -382,20 +383,26 @@ coerce_type(ParseState *pstate, Node *node,
 	{
 		/*
 		 * If we have a COLLATE clause, we have to push the coercion
-		 * underneath the COLLATE.  This is really ugly, but there is little
-		 * choice because the above hacks on Consts and Params wouldn't happen
+		 * underneath the COLLATE; or discard the COLLATE if the target type
+		 * isn't collatable.  This is really ugly, but there is little choice
+		 * because the above hacks on Consts and Params wouldn't happen
 		 * otherwise.  This kluge has consequences in coerce_to_target_type.
 		 */
 		CollateExpr *coll = (CollateExpr *) node;
-		CollateExpr *newcoll = makeNode(CollateExpr);
 
-		newcoll->arg = (Expr *)
-			coerce_type(pstate, (Node *) coll->arg,
-						inputTypeId, targetTypeId, targetTypeMod,
-						ccontext, cformat, location);
-		newcoll->collOid = coll->collOid;
-		newcoll->location = coll->location;
-		return (Node *) newcoll;
+		result = coerce_type(pstate, (Node *) coll->arg,
+							 inputTypeId, targetTypeId, targetTypeMod,
+							 ccontext, cformat, location);
+		if (type_is_collatable(targetTypeId))
+		{
+			CollateExpr *newcoll = makeNode(CollateExpr);
+
+			newcoll->arg = (Expr *) result;
+			newcoll->collOid = coll->collOid;
+			newcoll->location = coll->location;
+			result = (Node *) newcoll;
+		}
+		return result;
 	}
 	pathtype = find_coercion_pathway(targetTypeId, inputTypeId, ccontext,
 									 &funcId);