Re: replace oidrand() with random_sample()

Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com> writes:
>> I agree that oidrand() is crufty and no longer useful, but I had
>> hesitated to rip it out, for fear that somebody somewhere might still
>> be using it.  It's not like it's costing us any maintenance effort
>> to leave it there.

> Keep in mind that it was undocumented and strangely named -- while there
> might be some people using it, I'd wager not many.

True enough.

> Whether we leave it in or not, I'd vote for eventually getting rid of
> the current version. So if we keep it, we could add random_sample() and
> keep oidrand() as a wrapper over it (that emits an elog(WARNING) to let
> people know it's been deprecated). And if we want to get rid of it, we
> could probably just add the elog() for 7.4 and then remove it outright
> in 7.5.

Well, now you're adding a whole lot of maintenance effort to support
some quite-hypothetical users of a function we all agree is junk ;-)

I think we should either leave it be, or rip it out and be done with it.
I don't actually much care which (does anyone out there have an
opinion?).  But a phased-obsolescence plan is far more work than it
deserves.

            regards, tom lane