2012/2/17 Kevin Grittner <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov>:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As far as I know, the fact that LIKE is another spelling for ~~ is
> a
>> PostgreSQL implementation detail with which users ought not to be
>> burdened.
>
> +1
>
> LIKE is well defined by the standard, and the ~~ operator is not
> mentioned there anywhere.
>
> On the other hand, LIKE is defined to either work on character
> strings or binary strings -- there is nothing in the standard about
> using it with other data types or automatic casting to support that.
> Any such support would be a non-standard PostgreSQL extension. As
> such, anyone wanting to write portable code should avoid that by
> explicit casting (which should be portable).
>
>> I remember there was a time when you couldn't say "SELECT a x FROM
>> foo" in PostgreSQL.
>
> That was in violation of the SQL standard, which makes AS an allowed
> but optional noise word.
>
> In spite of all that, perhaps we should have a compatibility
> extension which provides more casts, in an attempt to ease the
> transition from other databases? Personally, I like having the
> default behavior this strict -- I think it reduces the chance of
> errors, reduces the chances of accidentally having type mismatches
> which defeat optimizations, and improves portability. But I have
> nothing against allowing someone to give all that up to ease
> transition from another product. My biggest concern is whether we
> might "paint ourselves into a corner" by including such an
> extension. It might shut off avenues for other cool features
> because anyone using the extension would have conflicts. Perhaps
> such a thing would be more appropriate on PGXN with admonitions that
> it was only intended to ease conversion and that users were
> encouraged to migrate to standard syntax as soon as possible.
>
+1
Pavel
> -Kevin
>
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