Re: Unicode string literals versus the world

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> On Tuesday 14 April 2009 18:54:33 Tom Lane wrote:
>> The other proposal that seemed
>> attractive to me was a decode-like function:
>>
>> uescape('foo\00e9bar')
>> uescape('foo\00e9bar', '\')

> This was discussed previously, but rejected with the following argument:

> There are some other disadvantages for making a function call. You
> couldn't use that kind of literal in any other place where the parser
> calls for a string constant: role names, tablespace locations,
> passwords, copy delimiters, enum values, function body, file names.

I'm less than convinced that those are really plausible use-cases for
characters that one is unable to type directly. However, I'll grant the
point. So that narrows us down to considering the \u extension to E''
strings as a saner and safer alternative to the spec's syntax.

regards, tom lane