Re: psql feature thought

Tom Lane wrote:
> Michael Glaesemann <grzm@seespotcode.net> writes:
>> What use case are you envisioning? Just saving ... *counts ... 14  
>> keystrokes in this case? (I'm not saying there *isn't* a use case. I  
>> just don't see a big benefit here.)
> 
> Quite aside from the compatibility and how-useful-is-it-really
> arguments, I think this'd be a bad idea in the abstract.  SQL is not one
> of those languages that assigns semantic significance to the shape of
> whitespace [1].  We should NOT introduce any such concept into psql,
> because it'd fundamentally break the lexical structure of the language.
> To take just one example of the difficulties you'd get into, consider
> 
>     select 1; select
>         2; select 3;
> 
> How many transactions is that exactly?  And on what grounds are you
> deciding?

Well, my use case was that I was doing a quick batch process that had 
about half a dozen statements in a row that were insert/update/delete.

If I had forgotten to type by begin; , I could have a problem with 
consistency of various things if one in the middle failed.

I understand that this is completely a sugar feature and I am not 
actually arguing for as much as I am saying, "Hey this was an 
interesting thought".

> 
> (No, I don't like python.  Why do you ask? ;-))

Heh... I happen to like Python quite a bit:

But even in Python you can do:

select 1; select 2; select 3;
From an implementation perspective I would suggest that if the line has 
a carriage return then it doesn't behave as a single transaction.. e.g;

BEGIN;   SELECT 1;   SELECT 2;
COMMIT;

Would be the same as:

SELECT 1; SELECT 2;

But not the same as:

SELECT 1;
SELECT 2;

Egad... forget I even mentioned it... These looks like a whole lot of 
pgsql-novice posts having to be answerd.

Thanks for entertaining me though.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> [1] Mostly.  There's the infamous continued-string-literal construct...
> 


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