Re: json api WIP patch

Merlin Moncure <mmoncure(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:
>> On 01/31/2013 05:06 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>>> I would like to not create any -> operators, so that that syntax could
>>> be used in the future for method invocation or something similar (it's
>>> in the SQL standard).

>> This is the first time I have heard that we should stay away from this. We
>> have operators with this name in hstore, which is why I chose it.

I'm not happy about this either. It's bad enough that we're thinking
about taking away =>, but to disallow -> as well? My inclination is to
just say no, we're not implementing that. Even if we remove the contrib
operators named that way, it's insane to suppose that nobody has chosen
these names for user-defined operators in their applications.

> quick off-topic aside: is colon (:) reserved for any purpose as an
> operator in SQL?

We disallow it as an operator character, because of the conflict with
parameter/variable syntax in ecpg and psql. It was allowed before
PG 7.0, IIRC.

regards, tom lane