Re: SQL99 ARRAY support proposal

"scott.marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)ihs(dot)com> writes:

> On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Þórhallur Hálfdánarson wrote:
>
> > -*- Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> [ 2003-03-14 17:43 ]:
> > > Do you really think someone looking for a function to break up a string into a
> > > list of strings would ever think of looking up "explode" in an index if he
> > > hadn't already used PHP or (shudder) VBScript?
> >
> > If one had gotten used to Lotus Notes, sure. ;>
>
> To try and get back on track...
>
> Let me ask you, if you were looking through a list of array functions
> and you saw explode and implode, and you had no other experience with a
> language that used those keywords, would you, upon seeing them, have some
> idea what they did?

It's all good Scott. Anyone wanting to use PostgreSQL arrays would
undoubtedly open up the corresponding part of the manual that covers
array functions. Since there is likely to be less than a page full of
function definitions you could probably call the functions foo() and
bar() and get away with it (please don't). While I personally think
that join_str and split_str are somewhat more descriptive, implode and
explode are fine.

More importantly, since *you* are the one doing the actual legwork
it's your call. IMHO that's one of the benefits of actually
submitting code. You write the code, you get to pick the function
names. Now, you might have some issues from the rest of the
PostgreSQL hackers if you named the functions "marlowe-ify" and
"un-marlowe-ify", but anything not completely ridiculous should be
fine (and even marlowe-ify would have the advantage of not being a
reserved word in any software I can think of off hand).

As for the rest of the discussion, poking fun at development languages
and tools is an age-old part of computers. PHP has the disadvantage
of being both very popular, very new, and primarily a web technology
(and of not being Lisp like :) so it draws more than its share of
flames. It's all good fun.

Jason