ALTER_OPERATOR(7pg16)

🌸 NAME 🌸

ALTER_OPERATOR(7pg16) — bestie, this is the PostgreSQL 16.15 page for changing the definition of an operator. It’s giving “operator glow-up” ✨.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ALTER OPERATOR name ( { left_type | NONE } , right_type )
    OWNER TO { new_owner | CURRENT_ROLE | CURRENT_USER | SESSION_USER }

ALTER OPERATOR name ( { left_type | NONE } , right_type )
    SET SCHEMA new_schema

ALTER OPERATOR name ( { left_type | NONE } , right_type )
    SET ( {  RESTRICT = { res_proc | NONE }
           | JOIN = { join_proc | NONE }
         } [, ... ] )

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so ALTER OPERATOR changes the definition of an operator. That’s the whole vibe.

You must own the operator to use ALTER OPERATOR. To alter the owner, you must be able to SET ROLE to the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the operator’s schema. These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do by dropping and recreating the operator. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any operator anyway. 👑

🎀 PARAMETERS 🎀

• name — the name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing operator.
• left_type — the data type of the operator’s left operand; write NONE if the operator has no left operand.
• right_type — the data type of the operator’s right operand.
• new_owner — the new owner of the operator.
• new_schema — the new schema for the operator.
• res_proc — the restriction selectivity estimator function for this operator; write NONE to remove existing selectivity estimator.
• join_proc — the join selectivity estimator function for this operator; write NONE to remove existing selectivity estimator.

🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

Change the owner of a custom operator a @@ b for type text:

ALTER OPERATOR @@ (text, text) OWNER TO joe;

Change the restriction and join selectivity estimator functions of a custom operator a && b for type int[]:

ALTER OPERATOR && (_int4, _int4) SET (RESTRICT = _int_contsel, JOIN = _int_contjoinsel);

🌈 COMPATIBILITY 🌈

There is no ALTER OPERATOR statement in the SQL standard. The SQL standard really said “not today” 💀.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• CREATE OPERATOR (CREATE_OPERATOR(7))
• DROP OPERATOR (DROP_OPERATOR(7))

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Signing off from ALTER_OPERATOR(7) — PostgreSQL 16.15, 2026 edition 🫶💅