Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org> writes:
> As a thought, will it add significant maintenance penalties or be
> detrimental?
Well, yes it will if you look at the big picture. In the past we've
generally regretted it when we put in nonstandard features just to be
compatible with some other database. (Tatsuo already pointed out the
"foo = NULL" fiasco.) And we get ragged on regularly for the non-SQL-
standard features we've inherited from Berkeley Postgres (eg, the
implicit-FROM frammish that was under discussion yesterday).
I don't think we're really doing the users any favor either. If they
want to move to some other database after Postgres, are they likely to
get that other database to insert a not-very-useful nonstandard syntax?
Sooner or later they're going to have to bite this bullet, and it may
as well be sooner. (I can hardly believe that this is the worst
compatibility issue an ex-Informix user would face, anyhow.)
This is an Informix-ism. It should stay that way.
regards, tom lane