Re: patch: to_string, to_array functions

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 4:34 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:
>> Is there any reason why array functions need the type prefix when
>> other type conversion functions don't?  Why didn't we name unnest()
>> array_unnest()?
>
> UNNEST() is in the standard, IIRC, so you'd have to ask the SQL
> committee that.  (And no, they're not exactly being consistent either,
> see array_agg() for example.)
>
> But anyway, my point here is that these functions are close enough to
> the existing string_to_array/array_to_string functions that they should
> be presented as variants of those, not arbitrarily assigned unrelated
> new names.  Whether we'd have chosen different names if we had it to do
> over is academic.

I don't array_agg is the same case, because you're aggregating into an
array, not from one.  all the same, +1 to your names (didn't like
explode much).

merlin