Re: massive quotes?

Tom Lane wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Some people think a "sql syntax solution" is needed, and some do not.
> >> 
> > So does this get resolved by a vote?
> 
> A vote is a little premature when we don't have fully-developed
> alternatives to choose from.  The psql "literal" proposal is fairly
> squishy around the edges (no one's written down an exact spec), while
> the camp that wants a sql-syntax solution has not gotten further than
> wishing.  The COPY camp is touting their answer as applicable to more
> than psql, but I haven't seen any explanation of exactly how it would be
> useful (or better than existing approaches) in non-psql frontends.  The
> only specific use-case that's been presented for it is psql scripts.
> 
> The discussion so far today seems to be entirely a rehash of arguments
> already made (and in many cases already rebutted).  Rather than wasting
> list bandwidth with this, I think each camp ought to go off and do their
> homework.  Give us *details* of how your solution would work.

Another idea would be to enable another set of quoting characters, like:
CREATE FUNCTION xx ...<--    x = 'fred';    ...-->

and have the lexer understand those new quoting characters.  We just use
'' too much in function bodies to use that also for quoting the function
text.  Of course, '<--' would have no special meaning inside a quoted
string, so we are only eliminating their use as custom operators, and I
think that is reasonable.

Having heard all the other proposals, I think this will be the clearest.

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