Re: [HACKERS] massive quotes?

[Andrew Dunstan]

There's certainly a TODO, but I'm not yet 100% sure that the solution 
Jon proposed is best. I'm looking at it as we write, and making it work 
looks to be somewhat complex. If we go that road we would probably need 
to generalise somewhat the COPY code.

The alternative in my mind is some function foo such that
 foo(e) = 'e'
Comments are welcome - this is virgin ground for me :-)

andrew

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Is there a TODO here?  The only problem I see is that it introduces the
idea of special column-1 handling, which we don't have right now, except
in COPY.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
 

Jon Jensen wrote:

   

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Andrew Dunstan wrote:



     

What is the state of things regarding having to use massive strings of 
quotes like this (taken from the 7.3 docs)?:

a_output := a_output || '' if v_'' || 
   referrer_keys.kind || '' like '''''''''' 
   || referrer_keys.key_string || '''''''''' 
   then return ''''''  || referrer_keys.referrer_type 
   || ''''''; end if;''; 

This is truly ugly, IMNSHO. Perl has its q() construct - any chance of
us doing something here?
I'm prepared to put in effort to implement a solution if there is
agreement on what the solution should be. Maybe some sort of magical
operator/function?
  

       

I was thinking the most natural thing would be to use something similar to 
COPY's stdin quoting:

CREATE FUNCTION bob() RETURNS INTEGER AS stdin LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
BEGIN
        ...
END;
\.
Another possibility would be shell/Perl-style here documents, like this:

CREATE FUNCTION bob() RETURNS INTEGER AS <<EOF
BEGIN
        ...
END;
EOF
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
The former seems preferable since it uses a syntax PostgreSQL already
supports in another context.
Jon

     

Nice idea. I would probably never have thought of it :-) Makes function 
text almost first class, in the way that Oracle's is AFAICS,

I also prefer the first version, not least because it hoists the 
LANGUAGE clause to the top where it seems to me it belongs.

I have no idea how hard this would be.

cheers

andrew

   



---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?
              http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html