Re: final patch - plpgsql: for-in-array

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 11:55 PM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> ok, I can only recapitulate so this feature was proposed cca two
> months ago, and minimally Tom and maybe you did agreement - with
> request on syntax - do you remember? I am little bit tired so this
> agreement was changed when I spent my time with this.

I went back and reread the thread I believe you're speaking about.
The first post is here:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2010-09/msg01945.php

I cannot find one single email on that thread where Tom or I or anyone
else endorsed the syntax you've proposed here; indeed, it and some
other suggestions were roundly criticized. You responded to that by
saying that the arguments against it were all wrong, but no one other
than you ever appeared to believe that. There are a few emails on
that thread where other people agreed that it would be nice, in
theory, to have some syntax for this, but there is not one single
email that I see saying that any syntax you proposed was a good one.
If you read that thread and concluded that there was consensus to
implement this syntax, you did not read it very carefully.

If we had ELEMENT as a reserved keyword (which apparently it is in
some versions of the SQL standard), maybe FOR ELEMENT wunk IN
wunkarray... would be sufficiently unambiguous. But it's not even an
unreserved keyword right now, and I have a hard time thinking it would
be worth reserving it just for this.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company