Proposal: scalar functions similar to vector

[Armatorix]

Proposal

Now when you want to make some functions like floor, round, ceil, etc. on scalar you've got to firstly change it to vector than make some functions on it and change it back to scalar. IMO it would be better to have also functions directly on scalars.
Example:

• now: scalar(round(vector(time())))
• request: round(time())
  Or I'm missing some feature or concept?

[brian-brazil]

This was something I specifically avoided when considering PromQL changes, as overloading functions makes them harder to understand - particularly if the output type varies too as you seem to be proposing. Instead if you've a different type of input, you get a different function (e.g. avg_over_time vs avg). Once you do that any benefits are quite a bit smaller.

[Armatorix]

You're probably right with overloading.
Maybe referring to existing functions, prometheus could have floor_scalar, round_scalar, etc. ? Then there will be no overloading, also in some cases sytax should be less complex and ofc performance benefits.

[brian-brazil]

That seems like it'd be a bit much clutter in the language for something that's already possible. The performance differences here are negligible, we're only talking doing math on a single value.