Jon Jensen wrote:
>On Sat, 13 Sep 2003, Miko O'Sullivan wrote:
>
>
>
>>jon@endpoint.com (Jon Jensen) wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.58.0309111950010.7142@louche.swelter.net>...
>>
>>
>>>INSERT INTO sometable (5, <<\.
>>>a
>>>very long
>>>string
>>>\.
>>>);
>>>
>>>
>>I'm delighted to hear that here docs are being discussed for postgres.
>> In the world of Perl here docs make life SO MUCH easier by allowing
>>for independent quoting scopes. Jon, I'm totally in agreement with you
>>that here docs would be a valuable addition to postgres. I'd like to
>>propose a few modifications on the syntax you suggest above.
>>
>>In Perl, the rule for here docs is NOT "it starts immediately after
>>the definition of the terminator" (as in your example). The rule is
>>"it starts on the first line after the end of the command in which the
>>terminator appears". There's a very good reason for this distinction.
>> That reason is that it allows the command to be succinct, usually a
>>single line, and the here doc stays completely separate. So, your
>>example would like this instead:
>>
>> INSERT INTO sometable (5, <<'(END)');
>> a
>> very long
>> string
>> (END)
>>
>>Notice that the entire INSERT command is on one line. Very easy to
>>read.
>>
Well we might also have something like
CREATE FUNCTION ... AS QUOTE('MyEndMarker')
....
all the stuff
... MyEndMarker LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
This looks quite SQL-like and should be easily implementable. Anyway,
this Perl-like style or Tom's proof-of-concept dollar-quoting one, both
seem equally usable, now let's have someone roll a die to decide.
Regards,
Andreas