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PG.CENTER connects PostgreSQL documentation, reference, and ecosystem knowledge. Maintained by Pigsty.

Supported versions: 16 / 15 / 14
Unsupported versions: 13 / 12 / 11 / 10 / 9.6 / 9.5 / 9.4
Historical version. PostgreSQL 13 reached end of support in November 2025. See the current manual for supported releases.

65.2. Built-in Operator Classes

The core PostgreSQL distribution includes the SP-GiST operator classes shown in Table 65.1.

Table 65.1. Built-in SP-GiST Operator Classes

Name Indexed Data Type Indexable Operators Ordering Operators
kd_point_ops point << <@ <^ >> >^ ~= <->
quad_point_ops point << <@ <^ >> >^ ~= <->
range_ops any range type && &< &> -|- << <@ = >> @>
box_ops box << &< && &> >> ~= @> <@ &<| <<| |>> |&> <->
poly_ops polygon << &< && &> >> ~= @> <@ &<| <<| |>> |&> <->
text_ops text < <= = > >= ~<=~ ~<~ ~>=~ ~>~ ^@
inet_ops inet, cidr && >> >>= > >= <> << <<= < <= =

Of the two operator classes for type point, quad_point_ops is the default. kd_point_ops supports the same operators but uses a different index data structure that may offer better performance in some applications.

The quad_point_ops, kd_point_ops and poly_ops operator classes support the <-> ordering operator, which enables the k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) search over indexed point or polygon data sets.

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