Re: No PL/PHP ? Any reason?

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> Is there any technical obstacle to anyone creating PL/PHP? I am
> cruious as to why it doesn't alreay exist.

Obviously we need to improve our documentation. What led you to
believe it does not exist? As pointed out downthread, it does
exist (if not maintained).

> I mean, I love my Tcl support, and I know this is part of PG's
> legacy... but Tcl and no PHP? I figure there's a tech reason for
> this - the demand must be there! No?

No, I'd say the demand is most definitely not there. I support a
great number of clients, and pretty much everyone uses pl/pgsql,
a great many use pl/perl, and a handful use pl/tcl or pl/python
or pl/ruby. Nobody uses pl/php.

Some major strikes against it (consider these todo items for
those who would like to see pl/php live again):

* No trusted/untrusted versions
* Not in core
* Not even in contrib or pgfoundry or github
* It seems to suffer from a lot of configuration issues
* Hard to find:
** First google hit on pl/php is projects.commandprompt.com/public/plphp
** Which simply says: Go here instead: https://redmine.commandprompt.com/
** Which stops you with a login and password page
* The documentation is a mess (dead URLs, mislabelled sections)
* PHP is not as stable, mature, secure, or well designed as Perl/Tcl/Python.
Which makes Postgres people less likely to consider it.
* They chose backslash '\' as their namespace delimiter. Backslash!

Okay, that last one isn't a major strike, but it's damn annoying (and
indicative of the poor design of the language :)

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg(at)turnstep(dot)com
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