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
Nice idea. I would probably never have thought of it :-) Makes function text almost first class, in the way that Oracle's is AFAICS,
I also prefer the first version, not least because it hoists the LANGUAGE clause to the top where it seems to me it belongs.
I have no idea how hard this would be.
cheers
andrew
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