Re: OUTER keyword

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 10:10 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> I don't see a good reason to change it. The SQL standard is perfectly
>> clear that OUTER is a fully reserved word.

> My vote would be to change it. We don't normally reserve keywords
> unnecessarily.

Well, we don't like *upgrading* keywords without real good reason,
but OUTER has had its current classification since forever. The
argument for trying to downgrade it was to avoid breaking a plpgsql
function that used to work, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for
that. There are any number of cases where you used to be able
to get away with using reserved words as plpgsql variable names and
now cannot, and most of them are not going to be fixable like this.

The scenario that concerns me is that some future SQL spec addition
uses OUTER in such a way that it has to be reserved again, which
isn't going to bother the committee any since they already think
it's reserved. Then we have to upgrade it, and all we've accomplished
is to encourage people to write unportable, non-future-proof code.

regards, tom lane