Re: case dumbiness in return from functions

Nico Sabbi wrote:

>
> Tom Lane ha scritto:
> > Ivan Sergio Borgonovo <mail(at)webthatworks(dot)it> writes:
> >
> >> After discovering that pg_get_serial_sequence behaves in a bit
> >> strange way[1] when it deals to case sensitiveness
> >>
> >
> > The SQL standard specifies that unquoted identifiers are case-insensitive.
> > You're welcome to spell them as camelCase in your source code if you
> > feel like it, but don't expect that PG, or any other SQL-compliant
> > database, will pay attention.
> >
> > regards, tom lane
>
> yet I find disturbing that Postgres doesn't make the effort
> to respect the case specified by the user. If I created a field
> called "REF" why should Postgres call it "ref" in the output of queries
> if the standard doesn't specify any obligation to convert the name ?
> I'd like to have the possibility to enable this feature in future releases.

Why should it PostgreSQL "make the effort" ?

Tom was _very_ clear in the SQL standard.

Oracle and Informix also ignore your capitals, although they behave slightly differently in forcing things to upper or lower case. In Informix:

create table FOO (FooId SERIAL PRIMARY KEY);

INFO - foo: Columns Indexes Privileges References Status ...
Display column names and data types for a table.
----------------------- billing(at)arches_ip ------ Press CTRL-W for Help --------
Column name Type Nulls
fooid serial no

Bottom line: well documented in all databases I have seen. Not very important -- if you really care (why on earth would you?) then double quote things like table and column names.

I would _far_ rather have developers work on resolving subtle issues, or adding *useful* features than this sort of basura.

Greg Williamson
Senior DBA
GlobeXplorer LLC, a DigitalGlobe company

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