Re: Chatter on DROP SOMETHING IF EXISTS

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > "Jim C. Nasby" <jim(at)nasby(dot)net> writes:
> > > On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 01:54:13PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> > >> I would be satisfied if the returned command tag were something else,
> > >> maybe "NO OPERATION".
> >
> > > "TABLE blah DID NOT EXIST" might be less confusing...
> >
> > You're confusing a command tag with a notice. In the first place,
> > we shouldn't assume that applications are ready to deal with
> > indefinitely long command tags (the backend itself doesn't think they
> > can be longer than 64 bytes); in the second place, they should be
> > constant strings for the most part so that simple strcmp()s suffice
> > to see what happened. Command tags are meant for programs to deal
> > with, more than humans.
>
> Yep. Because IF EXISTS is in a lot of object destruction commands,
> adding a modified tag seems very confusing, because in fact the DROP
> TABLE did succeed, so to give any other tag seems incorrect.

I don't understand -- what problem you got with "NO OPERATION"? It
seemed a sound idea to me.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
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