[IMPALA-9600] Support Format Modifiers for String Conversion

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: Backend
• Labels: built-in-function ramp-up
• Epic Color: ghx-label-10
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Shant Hovsepian
• Created: 03/Apr/20 15:49
• Updated: 22/Dec/20 20:43

Description

A lack of support for "format modifiers" or "template patterns" while converting numeric and potentially other types to strings is a hinderance on usability.

There may not be a way to do this as part of the SQL Standard, most database have a common extension to type conversion functions such as CONVERT() CAST() or TO_CHAR() that take a "printf" style format string as an argument. Locale awareness may have to be taken into consideration.

For example Postgresql uses this syntax to add a thousand separator:

to_char(148.5, '999D999')