Re: deprecating =>, take two

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> Barring vigorous objections, I will apply these tomorrow so that we
>> can consider deprecating => as an operator name in 9.1, for better
>> compliance with the SQL standard.
>
> Two documentation comments:
>
> 1. Perhaps, rather than
>
>> +   The <literal>=></> operator is deprecated and may be removed in a
>> +   future release.  The use of the <literal>hstore(text, text)</literal>
>> +   function is recommended as an alternative.
>
> write
>
>> +   The <literal>=></> operator is deprecated and will be removed in a
>> +   future release.  Use the <literal>hstore(text, text)</literal>
>> +   function instead.
>
> in particular, s/may/will/ and avoid passive voice in the second sentence.

Avoiding the passive voice is a good idea, and I like your suggested
phrasing.  I'm reluctant to say what we "will" do in a future release
because we don't always do what we claim we'll do.  For example, we're
planning to remove contrib/xml2 in 8.4.

http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/xml2.html

Still, I haven't heard too many arguments against disallowing => as an
operator, so perhaps it's safe to bank on it actually happening in
this case?

> 2. The 8.4 and 8.3 doc patches should include this same paragraph.

OK.

--
Robert Haas
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