Re: hstore ==> and deprecate =>

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 8:07 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> I believe that the consensus was mostly in favor of deprecating => as
> an operator name, with the intent to abolish it completely in a future
> release.  Attached is a patch to implement ==> as an alternative
> operator name for hstore, and to make the backend throw a warning when
> => is used as an operator name.

I don't think we can throw warnings for DML except in the most dire
circumstances. In an OLTP system with high throughput a warning would
fill the logs quickly, effectively making it impossible to use the
syntax being warned about. If we're willing to do that we would just
use an ERROR anyways which I don't think we're willing to do. People
might need a transition period when they still use => because they
need to write code which will work with either old or new versions.

> One wart is that => is used not only as a SQL-level operator, but also
> by hstore_in() when interpreting hstore-type literals, and by
> hstore_out() when generating them.  My gut feeling is that we should
> leave this part alone and only muck with the SQL operator, but perhaps
> someone will care to argue the point.

I hate these kinds of inconsistencies. I would prefer both operators
be consistent.

--
greg