Michael Meskes <meskes@postgresql.org> writes:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 10:06:30AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Hmm ... actually, ecpg might be a problem here anyway. I know it has
>> special meaning for :name, but does it allow space between the colon
>> and the name? If it does then the colon syntax loses. If it doesn't
> No. Here's the lexer rule:
> <SQL>:{identifier}((("->"|\.){identifier})|(\[{array}\]))*
> No space possible between ":" and {identifier}.
Excellent. I checked that psql's colon-variable feature behaves the
same. So it looks like the proposed "name: value" syntax would indeed
not break any existing features. Barring better ideas I think we should
go with that one.
regards, tom lane