Skip to content

Bitwise & and -> group differently in the PostgreSQL and MySQL/Generic dialects #2461

Description

@zvonimir-dd

& and -> have the same precedence in PostgreSQL but not in the default precedence table, so the
same expression produces two different trees depending on dialect:

SQL PostgreSqlDialect MySqlDialect / GenericDialect
a -> b & c ((a -> b) & c) (a -> (b & c))
a -> b | c ((a -> b) | c) ((a -> b) | c)
a -> b ^ c (a -> (b ^ c)) (a -> (b ^ c))
a -> b + c (a -> (b + c)) (a -> (b + c))

& is the only row that disagrees.

Cause

The default table in src/dialect/mod.rs has:

Precedence::Ampersand => 23,
Precedence::Caret => 22,
Precedence::Pipe => 21,
Precedence::Colon => 21,
Precedence::PgOther => 21,

PostgreSqlDialect::prec_value instead maps Ampersand, Pipe, Colon and PgOther all to
PG_OTHER_PREC (src/dialect/postgresql.rs:176-184), which matches gram.y, where & is just a
generic Op and shares one left-associative level with ->:

%left  Op OPERATOR RIGHT_ARROW '|'

So Pipe already agrees with PgOther in the default table (both 21), and Caret is legitimately
above it, but Ampersand at 23 is left as the sole outlier.

Candidate fix

-            Precedence::Ampersand => 23,
+            Precedence::Ampersand => 21,

The full suite passes unchanged with that applied, so no existing test pins the current grouping —
which is also why this went unnoticed. Display for Expr::BinaryOp emits no parentheses, so a
mis-grouped tree round-trips to the original SQL and verified_expr / verified_stmt cannot catch
it; a test would have to assert on the tree.

Open question, possibly a separate issue

For MySQL the fix above is necessary but not sufficient. MySQL's -> / ->> take a quoted JSON path
on the right-hand side, so there is nothing for MySQL to resolve — col->'$.a' + 1 can only mean
(col->'$.a') + 1. sqlparser parses that right operand as a full expression at PgOther, giving
col -> ('$.a' + 1), so -> under-binds in MySQL against +, *, ^ and friends, not just &.
Making that correct probably means a MySQL-specific precedence for the arrow operators rather than
another adjustment to the shared row, so I've kept it out of scope here — happy to split it out if
a maintainer would prefer it tracked separately.

Surfaced while working on #2436. Related: #2460.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions