Re: functional call named notation clashes with SQL feature

David E. Wheeler wrote:
> On Jun 5, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>
>
>> From a usability point of view, if we adopt the spec's syntax we have to
>> stop allowing => for any other purpose. Period.
>>
>
> What if we added a new "dual" type and limited the => operator only to that type, being, essentially, a constructor. Then hstore and function call param processing could be rewritten to transform those types into key/value pairs.
>
> So you'd call functions with:
>
> foo( bar => 1, baz => 'this');
>
> Actually, now that I think about it, the hstore => basically does this: it constructs an hstore from its two values. So why not basically move hstore into core and just use it for function arguments?
>
> Crazy idea, I know, but thought I'd just throw it out there.
>

I'm fairly strongly inclined to go with Tom's original dictum above.
Even if it's not strictly true, doing anything else is likely to be
rather fragile, ISTM.

cheers

andrew