Re: SQL function parse error ?

"Radu-Adrian Popescu" <radu(dot)popescu(at)aldratech(dot)com> writes:
> This is SQL, and people who are using PostgreSql write SQL, not
> whitespace-sensitive SQL, bash or whatever.

Nonsense. SQL syntax is space-sensitive. Or have you successfully
written
SELECTXFROMY;
lately?

There has occasionally been talk of disallowing '$' as a valid character
in operator names, which would eliminate the syntactic ambiguity in this
example. But undoubtedly it would also break a few applications that
use '$' in user-defined operator names, so the proposal hasn't passed
to date.

> Is there any operator named >$ ?

Whether there is one in the standard distribution is quite irrelevant.
It's a valid operator name according to the current rules, and so open
to definition by anyone who wants to.

The most recent discussion I can find about this is the pgsql-hackers
thread "Dollar in identifiers" from Aug 2001, eg
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2001-08/msg00629.php
There didn't seem to be a consensus to change things, so the old
behavior stands, for the moment.

regards, tom lane