I saw that in some complex query of mine where I expected "date" I saw "varchar(29)". The relevant part is that the first argument to "ADDDATE" is the "LEAST" of two DATEs.

Unhappilie, all the type changes are clearly documented--the most annoying is "LEAST" :

In all other cases, the arguments are compared as binary strings.

Timestamp types, too, are 'other cases'. It would be much better if "LEAST" (and "GREATEST") returned values of the type of their arguments, if all types were alike, aside from length and "width" (number of digits, of fractional digits, in timestamp types the degree below day but of the same origin), returning a value of the longest and widest, as the boundary allows.

It is also counterintuitive that "ADDDATE" returns anything but a value of some timestamp type.

Yuck.


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