Re: OUTER keyword

Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> On 04.10.2010 18:23, Tom Lane wrote:
> > I wrote:
> >> Heikki Linnakangas  writes:
> >>> Why is OUTER a type_func_name_keyword? The grammar doesn't require that,
> >>> it could as well be unreserved.
> >
> >> Hm, you sure?  All the JOIN-related keywords used to need to be at least
> >> that to avoid conflicts, IIRC.
> 
> Yes. OUTER is just an optional noise word in LEFT/RIGHT OUTER JOIN.
> 
> > Actually, on reflection, it's possible that only JOIN itself really
> > needs that treatment (because it can be followed by a left paren).
> > We might have made the JOIN modifier words the same level for
> > consistency or something.  If we can back off both INNER and OUTER
> > to unreserved, it might be worth doing.  I'd be a little more worried
> > about reducing LEFT/RIGHT/FULL, even if it works at the moment.
> 
> No, can't change INNER, that creates conflicts.
> 
> SELECT * FROM pg_class inner JOIN pg_namespace nsp ON nsp.oid = 
> relnamespace;
> 
> is ambiguous, "inner" could be either an alias name for pg_class or part 
> of "INNER JOIN".
> 
> I bumped into the OUTER case because we had a test case in the 
> EnterpriseDB test suite using OUTER as a PL/pgSQL variable name. It used 
> to work, at least in simple cases where you don't try to use "LEFT OUTER 
> JOIN", in 8.4 when PL/pgSQL replaced it with $1 in any SQL statements 
> before passing them to the backend. But not anymore in 9.0.

It this a TODO?

--  Bruce Momjian          http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com
 + It's impossible for everything to be true. +