[postgis-users] Upgrading PostGis: parsing geometries

[Guido Lemoine]

Hi all,

While upgrading to postgresql 8 and postgis 1.0.3 I came across the 
following
problems. They appear to be due to a change in the parser of the text 
strings
that build up the geometries. These problems did not exist before (< 1.0.x).

select SetSRID('BOX3D(10 20 , 30 40)'::box3d, 4326);
ERROR:  BOX3D parser - couldnt parse.  It should look like: BOX3D(xmin 
ymin zmin,xmax ymax zmax) or BOX3D(xmin ymin,xmax ymax)

This is because there is a space after 20 just before the comma. You'd 
expect the
parser to do some trimming before parsing.

The other one is far more annoying, however:

select geometryfromtext('POINT(34. 22.)', 4326);
ERROR:  parse error - invalid geometry

however, if you add a 0 after the decimal point (or remove the decimal 
point),
it works:

Positions=# select geometryfromtext('POINT(34.0 22.0)', 4326);
                 geometryfromtext
----------------------------------------------------
0101000020E610000000000000000041400000000000003640
(1 row)

A float without a trailing 0 is parsable in any normal programming
language. It's a real pain.

Guido Lemoine