Calling PL functions with named parameters

Kind people,

I've brought this up before, and with Dennis Bjőrklund's help, would
like to bring it up again. Here's the idea:

I'd like to be able to create functions with named parameters that
could be called with the names in any order. For example,

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION foo_func(name TEXT, val INTEGER) AS ...

SELECT foo_func(val AS 23, name AS 'Name goes here');

and have it Do The Right Thing.

Dennis has pointed out that mixing the call-with-named-parameter
interface with call-by-order-of-parameters one would cause confusion,
and I think it would be OK to disallow this type mixing, so

SELECT foo_func(name AS 'yet another name', 35);

would be disallowed.

A calling convention that names parameters makes it a lot easier to
track just exactly what parameter is set to which value, and lets
people not have to memorize what order those named parameters appear
in. On a related note, it would also be nice to have default
parameters and some way to say to use them.

Well, that's my thoughts so far. What are yours?

Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter david(at)fetter(dot)org http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 510 893 6100 mobile: +1 415 235 3778

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