On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 2:53 AM, Eden Cardim
<eden@insoli.de> wrote:
>>>>> "Craig" == Craig Ringer <ringerc@ringerc.id.au> writes:
Craig> I just wish they hadn't written it backwards!
Craig> It'd be much less confusing were it formulated as something
Craig> like:
Craig> SELECT FROM thetable WHERE first_letter > 'a' RESULTS
Craig> left(value,1) AS first_letter
Craig> or something, where the order is more obvious. I really
Craig> dislike the way SQL is written not-quite-backwards.
It's not "written backwards", it's plain natural language semantics:
"give me the first letter of all records where the first letter is
greater than a". Refining a set is better done walking from the more
general set to a subset, not the other way around, IMO: "give me all
persons that are females and over the age of 20". Mathematical set
builder notation does this in a similar fashion, for the same reason.
Natural language semantics will get you into trouble though. After all, I think Lisp follows natural language semantics remarkably closely if your natural language is Irish Gaelic....
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers