Re: PL/pgSQL 'i = i + 1' Syntax

On Fri, May 19, 2006 at 11:03:21PM +0300, Hannu Krosing wrote:
> A less disruptive change would be to have some predefined "record" where
> all local variables belong to, perhaps called 'local' or '_local_' :) so
> one could access both input parameter inp_orderdate and declared
> variable var_orderdate as local.inp_orderdate and local.var_orderdate
> respectively ? The old use (without local.) should still work.

That might be useful for othing things, too. Having _local. and
_parameters. could be handy, for example. But I'm not sure if this is
better than using $ or not...

IIRC, Oracle handles this by allowing you to prefix variables with the
name of the function. You can also have package-level variables, which
can be handy (whatever happened to the discussion about adding packages
or something similar to plpgsql??)

> > I think it would be better to at least strongly recommend always
> > prefixing variables and parameters with something. 
> 
> At least we should use such convention in our sample code in docs.

Yes, at a minimum.

> > I'd argue that it'd
> > be even better to put us on the road of eventually mandating plpgsql
> > variables be prefixed with something (like $), but I'm not holding my
> > breath on that one...
> 
> I dont believe in mandating non-backward-compatible changes, but prefix
> $ may be one way to disambiguate vars and fieldnames.

Well, this could be made optional (strict mode).
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Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant      jnasby@pervasive.com
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