On Jun17, 2011, at 15:36 , Alvaro Herrera wrote: > Excerpts from Florian Pflug's message of vie jun 17 04:46:32 -0400 2011: >> On Jun17, 2011, at 03:42 , Alvaro Herrera wrote: >>> To make matters worse, our delimiters for regexes are the same as for >>> strings, the single quote. So you get >>> >>> foo =~ 'bar' /* foo is the text column, bar is the regex */ >>> 'bar' =~ foo /* no complaint but it's wrong */ >>> >>> 'bar' ~= foo /* okay */ >>> 'foo' ~= bar /* no complaint but it's wrong */ >>> >>> How do I tell which is the regex here? If we used, say, /, that would >>> be a different matter: >> >> How is this different from the situation today where the operator >> is just "~"? > > Err, we don't have commutators today?
So? How does that reduce that risk of somebody writing "pattern ~ text" instead of "text ~ pattern"? Modifying your quote from above -------- foo ~ 'bar' /* foo is the text column, bar is the regex */ 'bar' ~ foo /* no complaint but it's wrong */ How do I tell which is the regex here? -------- How is that worse than the situation with "=~" and "~="? "=~" and "~=" at least don't *look* symmetric when they really are not, which is the heart of the complaint, and also what makes defining a sensible commutator impossible. Also, do you have a better suggestion for how we can fix my original gripe? Adding support for 'ANY/ALL op scalar" was shot down by Tom, so it looks like we need a commutator for "~". "@" is severely disliked by Tom, on the grounds that it's already been deprecated in other places. "=~" is argued against by you and Robert Haas (I think). We're running out of options here... best regards, Florian Pflug -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
