Re: functional call named notation clashes with SQL feature

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
>
>> Yes, but if we are going to have to honor "=>" eventually, shouldn't we
>> just do it now? Supporting := and => seems confusing.
>>
>
> Personally, I haven't accepted the "if" part of that, therefore I
> feel no need to argue over the "then".
>
>
>

OK, but if that's going to influence the decision, let's debate it.

I think we should aim to comply with the spec, and incidentally be
compatible with Oracle too. => is used by a number of other languages,
for this or a similar purpose, so it would feel a bit more intuitive
and familiar to some people.

I don't have strong feelings about the timing - I'd be very surprised if
:= were to be used in this context for any other purpose, so I don't
think we'd be biting ourselves too much by just using that now. But if
we do that, we should deprecate use of => as an operator now, and
definitely remove its use in hstore either now or in 9.1.

cheers

andrew