On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 01:41:49AM +1000, Neil Conway wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >But this doesn't make it easier to use - users don't just include those who
> >write it. The antecedent language of these, Ada, from which this syntax
> >comes, was explicitly designed to be reader-friendly as opposed to
> >writer-friendly, and this is a part of that.
>
> IMHO it is just needless verbiage that makes programs both harder to
> read *and* harder to write, albeit marginally so. I think there is a
> reason why Ada-style block terminators are in the minority among
> block-structured languages :)
>
> But obviously this is a matter of taste -- does anyone else like or
> dislike the current syntax?
"Like" is a bit strong. But it does make functions written in it easier
to read. And given that the primary debugging methodolofy for pl/pgsql
is "Look at it hard and see what might be incorrect" I can't see that
as a bad thing.
I'd trade a whole lot of "harder to write" for even some "likely to
work".
Cheers, Steve