Re: Proposal: associative arrays for plpgsql (concept)

On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 01:20:17PM -0400, Douglas McNaught wrote:
> David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> writes:
>
> > I'm all in favor of having associative arrays as a 1st-class data
> > type in PostgreSQL. How much harder would it be to make these
> > generally available vs. tied to one particular language?
>
> We already have them--they're called "tables with primary keys". :)
>
> What's the use-case for these things? Just imitating Oracle?

It would make named function parameters *very* easy to do. :)

SELECT *
FROM foo_func(
a => 2,
b => 5,
c => current_timestamp::timestamp with time zone
);

would be equivalent to

SELECT *
FROM foo_func(
c => current_timestamp::timestamp with time zone,
a => 2,
b => 5
);

and both would Do The Right Thing. It also opens the door to default
parameters for those who want them.

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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