Re: row_to_json(), NULL values, and AS

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Neil Conway <neil.conway@gmail.com>, Postgres-Bugs <pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org>
Date: 2018-06-19T14:34:49Z
Lists: pgsql-bugs, pgsql-hackers
On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 10:53 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> I'm a bit hesitant to muck with this behavior, given that it's stood
> for ~20 years.  However, if we did want to touch it, maybe the right
> thing would be to give up the absolutist position that f(x) and x.f
> are exactly interchangeable.  We could say instead that we prefer the
> function interpretation if function syntax is used, and the column
> interpretation if column syntax is used.  I don't know how likely
> that is to break existing apps ... perhaps not very, but I wouldn't
> risk back-patching it in any case.

For the record, I fear that this change (committed as
b97a3465d73bfc2a9f5bcf5def1983dbaa0a26f8) is going to break more
things than have been foreseen in this thread.  I do not have a
specific theory about how that's going to happen, just vague unease.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company


Commits

  1. Remove obsolete prohibition on function name matching a column name.

  2. Consider syntactic form when disambiguating function vs column reference.