Re: language interface in postgresql

"Scott Marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On 8/14/07, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> ... I think we probably are unique in being so
>> aggressively agnostic about what the function language is. That's
>> not necessarily all good, as it's driven us to invent curiosities
>> like dollar-quoting to avoid having to mesh lexical details of the
>> function language and the outer SQL language.

> Well, I for one LOVE $$ quoting in the newer versions of pgsql.
> Having statements with ''''''''value'''''''' in the, was downright
> annoying in 7.4...

You bet, but the reason why it was like that was we insisted on the
function body being a string literal in the eyes of the outer CREATE
FUNCTION command. Anytime the function's language had the same ideas
about string quoting and escaping rules as the outer SQL language does,
you were in for some recursively bad experiences.

Dollar-quoting is a cute technical solution to that, but you can't deny
that it's simpler if you just restrict the function language to be
SQL-ish so that CREATE FUNCTION can parse it without any interesting
quoting rules. So sayeth Oracle and the SQL standards committee,
anyway.

regards, tom lane