Re: CALL optional in PL/pgSQL

On 27/03/18 03:00, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 2:01 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> I think this is an actively bad idea.  It introduces an inherent ambiguity
>> into the grammar; for instance
>>
>>          PERFORM (2);
>>
>> now has two valid interpretations.  The only way to resolve that is with
>> heuristics or treating a bunch more words as reserved keywords, neither of
>> which are appetizing.  (I didn't look to see which way Peter did it, but
>> his description of his patch as "not very pretty" doesn't fill me with
>> happiness.)  And it would likely cause headaches down the road whenever
>> we attempt to add new syntax to plpgsql.
>>
>> I think we should reject the idea.
> 
> Well, the upside would be increased Oracle compatibility. I don't
> think that's worthless.
> 
> I haven't dug deeply into it, but Peter's patch didn't look
> desperately ugly to me at first glance.

I don't much like this either. The ambiguity it introduces in the 
grammar is bad. I'll mark this as rejected in the commitfest.

- Heikki