Re: massive quotes?

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Andrew Dunstan wrote:

> What is the state of things regarding having to use massive strings of 
> quotes like this (taken from the 7.3 docs)?:
> 
> a_output := a_output || '' if v_'' || 
>      referrer_keys.kind || '' like '''''''''' 
>      || referrer_keys.key_string || '''''''''' 
>      then return ''''''  || referrer_keys.referrer_type 
>      || ''''''; end if;''; 
> 
> This is truly ugly, IMNSHO. Perl has its q() construct - any chance of
> us doing something here?
> 
> I'm prepared to put in effort to implement a solution if there is
> agreement on what the solution should be. Maybe some sort of magical
> operator/function?

I was thinking the most natural thing would be to use something similar to 
COPY's stdin quoting:

CREATE FUNCTION bob() RETURNS INTEGER AS stdin LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
BEGIN...
END;
\.

Another possibility would be shell/Perl-style here documents, like this:

CREATE FUNCTION bob() RETURNS INTEGER AS <<EOF
BEGIN...
END;
EOF
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';

The former seems preferable since it uses a syntax PostgreSQL already
supports in another context.

Jon