Re: change alter user to be a true alias for alter role

Jov <amutu(at)amutu(dot)com> writes:
> I make the v2 of the patch,use Tom's advice.
> But I can't make ROLE and USER in the keyword list,it is hard to solve the
> conflict,or rewrite many gram rules.

This patch seems to be trying to make ROLE and USER interchangeable
*everywhere* in the grammar, which is moving the goalposts quite a long
way to little purpose. The idea seems rather misguided to me, since
certainly CREATE USER and CREATE ROLE will never be exact synonyms.
I think it's sufficient to solve the original complaint about them not
being interchangeable in ALTER.

The patch as given is broken anyway: it removes both those keywords
from the keyword lists, which effectively makes them fully reserved,
in fact worse than fully reserved.

What I had in mind was more like the attached, which I've not tested
but bison does compile it without complaint. I've not looked at the
documentation end of it, either.

regards, tom lane