here are some patches for 6.5.0 which I already submitted but have never

been applied. The patches are in the .tar.gz attachment at the end:

varchar-array.patch     this patch adds support for arrays of bpchar() and
                        varchar(), which where always missing from postgres.

                        These datatypes can be used to replace the _char4,
                        _char8, etc., which were dropped some time ago.

block-size.patch        this patch fixes many errors in the parser and other
                        program which happen with very large query statements
                        (> 8K) when using a page size larger than 8192.

                        This patch is needed if you want to submit queries
                        larger than 8K. Postgres supports tuples up to 32K
                        but you can't insert them because you can't submit
                        queries larger than 8K. My patch fixes this problem.

                        The patch also replaces all the occurrences of `8192'
                        and `1<<13' in the sources with the proper constants
                        defined in include files. You should now never find
                        8192 hardwired in C code, just to make code clearer.


--
Massimo Dal Zotto

src/backend/utils/adt/arrayfuncs.c

@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
  *
  *
  * IDENTIFICATION
- *	  $Header: /cvsroot/pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/arrayfuncs.c,v 1.38 1999/02/13 23:19:00 momjian Exp $
+ *	  $Header: /cvsroot/pgsql/src/backend/utils/adt/arrayfuncs.c,v 1.39 1999/05/03 19:09:59 momjian Exp $
  *
  *-------------------------------------------------------------------------
  */
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@
 #include <ctype.h>
 #include <stdio.h>
 #include <string.h>
+#include <stdarg.h>
 
 #include "postgres.h"
 
@@ -26,6 +27,7 @@
 #include "storage/fd.h"
 #include "fmgr.h"
 #include "utils/array.h"
+#include "utils/elog.h"
 
 #include "libpq/libpq-fs.h"
 #include "libpq/be-fsstubs.h"
@@ -614,7 +616,9 @@ array_out(ArrayType *v, Oid element_type)
 				i,
 				j,
 				k,
+#ifndef TCL_ARRAYS
 				l,
+#endif
 				indx[MAXDIM];
 	bool		dummy_bool;
 	int			ndim,
@@ -1274,6 +1278,156 @@ array_assgn(ArrayType *array,
 	return (char *) array;
 }
 
+/*
+ * array_map()
+ *
+ * Map an arbitrary function to an array and return a new array with
+ * same dimensions and the source elements transformed by fn().
+ */
+ArrayType *
+array_map(ArrayType *v,
+		  Oid type,
+		  char *(fn)(char *p, ...),
+		  Oid retType,
+		  int nargs,
+		  ...)
+{
+	ArrayType   *result;
+	void		*args[4];
+	char		**values;
+	char		*elt;
+	int			*dim;
+	int			ndim;
+	int			nitems;
+	int			i;
+	int			nbytes = 0;
+	int			inp_typlen;
+	bool		inp_typbyval;
+	int			typlen;
+	bool		typbyval;
+	char		typdelim;
+	Oid			typelem;
+	Oid			proc;
+	char	 	typalign;
+	char		*s;
+	char		*p;
+	va_list		ap;
+
+	/* Large objects not yet supported */
+	if (ARR_IS_LO(v) == true) {
+		elog(ERROR, "array_map: large objects not supported");
+	}
+
+	/* Check nargs */
+	if ((nargs < 0) || (nargs > 4)) {
+		elog(ERROR, "array_map: invalid nargs: %d", nargs);
+	}
+
+	/* Copy extra args to local variable */
+	va_start(ap, nargs);
+	for (i=0; i<nargs; i++) {
+		args[i] = (void *) va_arg(ap, char *);
+	}
+	va_end(ap);
+
+	/* Lookup source and result types. Unneeded variables are reused. */
+	system_cache_lookup(type, false, &inp_typlen, &inp_typbyval,
+						&typdelim, &typelem, &proc, &typalign);
+	system_cache_lookup(retType, false, &typlen, &typbyval,
+						&typdelim, &typelem, &proc, &typalign);
+
+	/* Allocate temporary array for new values */
+	ndim   = ARR_NDIM(v);
+	dim    = ARR_DIMS(v);
+	nitems = getNitems(ndim, dim);
+	values = (char **) palloc(nitems * sizeof(char *));
+	MemSet(values, 0, nitems * sizeof(char *));
+
+	/* Loop over source data */
+	s = (char *) ARR_DATA_PTR(v);
+	for (i=0; i<nitems; i++) {
+		/* Get source element */
+		if (inp_typbyval) {
+			switch (inp_typlen) {
+			case 1:
+				elt = (char *) ((int) (*(char *) s));
+				break;
+			case 2:
+				elt = (char *) ((int) (*(int16 *) s));
+				break;
+			case 3:
+			case 4:
+			default:
+				elt = (char *) (*(int32 *) s);
+				break;
+			}
+			s += inp_typlen;
+		} else {
+			elt = s;
+			if (inp_typlen > 0) {
+				s += inp_typlen;
+			} else {
+				s += INTALIGN(*(int32 *) s);
+			}
+		}
+
+		/*
+		 * Apply the given function to source elt and extra args.
+		 * nargs is the number of extra args taken by fn().
+		 */
+		switch (nargs) {
+		case 0:
+			p = (char *) (*fn) (elt);
+			break;
+		case 1:
+			p = (char *) (*fn) (elt, args[0]);
+			break;
+		case 2:
+			p = (char *) (*fn) (elt, args[0], args[1]);
+			break;
+		case 3:
+			p = (char *) (*fn) (elt, args[0], args[1], args[2]);
+			break;
+		case 4:
+		default:
+			p = (char *) (*fn) (elt, args[0], args[1], args[2], args[3]);
+			break;
+		}
+
+		/* Update values and total result size */
+		if (typbyval) {
+			values[i] = (char *) p;
+			nbytes += typlen;
+		} else {
+			int len;
+			len = ((typlen > 0) ? typlen : INTALIGN(*(int32 *) p));
+			/* Needed because _CopyArrayEls tries to pfree items */
+			if (p == elt) {
+				p = (char *) palloc(len);
+				memcpy(p, elt, len);
+			}
+			values[i] = (char *) p;
+			nbytes += len;
+		}
+	}
+
+	/* Allocate and initialize the result array */
+	nbytes += ARR_OVERHEAD(ndim);
+	result = (ArrayType *) palloc(nbytes);
+	MemSet(result, 0, nbytes);
+
+	memcpy((char *) result, (char *) &nbytes, sizeof(int));
+	memcpy((char *) ARR_NDIM_PTR(result), (char *) &ndim, sizeof(int));
+	memcpy((char *) ARR_DIMS(result), ARR_DIMS(v), 2 * ndim * sizeof(int));
+
+	/* Copy new values into the result array. values is pfreed. */
+	_CopyArrayEls((char **) values,
+				  ARR_DATA_PTR(result), nitems,
+				  typlen, typalign, typbyval);
+
+	return result;
+}
+
 /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  * array_eq :
  *		  compares two arrays for equality