Should the WAIT FOR command tag be "WAIT" or "WAIT FOR"?

From: Masahiko Sawada <sawada(dot)mshk(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Cc: Alexander Korotkov <aekorotkov(at)gmail(dot)com>, Ivan Kartyshov <i(dot)kartyshov(at)postgrespro(dot)ru>, Xuneng Zhou <xunengzhou(at)gmail(dot)com>
Subject: Should the WAIT FOR command tag be "WAIT" or "WAIT FOR"?
Date: 2026-08-28 19:58:18
Message-ID: CAD21AoBdtiPTbm7T_aNeDON9JpFG9g=JDUP4WU-Y8t8_xqvR5Q@mail.gmail.com
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Hi all,

While reviewing a patch for the WAIT FOR command I noticed that its
command tag is "WAIT" rather than "WAIT FOR". I could not find this
discussed in the main thread, although I have not read all of them, so
I might miss something. I want to confirm it because a command tag is
not something we can revisit later when we release v19.0.

There are some command tags that are shorter than the command they
name: RELEASE, ROLLBACK, SET and WAIT. While the first three commands
make sense as they have some variants or some keywords are omittable
such as RELEASE [SAVEPOINT], ROLLBACK [TRANSACTION], ROLLBACK TO
[SAVEPOINT], SET ROLE, and SET TRANSACTION, the WAIT FOR has a single
spelling, "WAIT FOR LSN ...". Strictly the same rule would argue for
"WAIT FOR LSN", but "WAIT FOR" is the name the manual gives the
command, and it leaves room if other things become waitable in the
future.

If it was a deliberate choice I am happy to leave it alone. Otherwise
I would slightly prefer "WAIT FOR", and I can post the one-line patch.

Regards,

--
Masahiko Sawada
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com

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