Re: proposal: plpgsql - Assert statement

On 11/18/2014 04:23 AM, Simon Riggs wrote:
> On 18 November 2014 01:00, Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@bluetreble.com> wrote:
>> On 11/17/14, 4:58 PM, Simon Riggs wrote:
>>>>> Great, looks good to me, marking as ready for committer.
>>>
>>> What is wrong with using IF ?
>>
>> It's a hell of a lot wordier. I've previously created a more sophisticated
>> "assert" framework to allow more control over things, but ended up also
>> using it just for simple sanity checking because it was much nicer than
>> typeing IF THEN RAISE ERROR END IF.
> Why is that not a requirement for a less wordier form of IF?
>
> IF (something) THEN action
>
> Why is this problem specific to RAISE?
>
>


Please, no. The use of closed form rather than open form IF statements 
is one of the things Ada (and by inheritance PLPGSQL) got right.

Frankly, I find this whole proposal, and all the suggested alternatives, 
somewhat ill-conceived. PLPGSQL is a wordy language. If you want 
something more terse, use something else. Adding these sorts of 
syntactic sugar warts onto the language doesn't seem like a terribly 
good way to proceed.

cheers

andrew