Horton

Re: factorial function/phase out postfix operators?

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

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From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: John Naylor <john.naylor@2ndquadrant.com>, Mark Dilger <mark.dilger@enterprisedb.com>, Vik Fearing <vik@postgresfriends.org>, Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2020-08-27T14:19:21Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 10:04 AM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Well, the !! operator itself has been "deprecated" for a long time:
>
> regression=# \do+ !!
>                                              List of operators
>    Schema   | Name | Left arg type | Right arg type | Result type |  Function   |        Description
> ------------+------+---------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+---------------------------
>  pg_catalog | !!   |               | bigint         | numeric     | numeric_fac | deprecated, use ! instead
>  pg_catalog | !!   |               | tsquery        | tsquery     | tsquery_not | NOT tsquery
> (2 rows)
>
> I'm a bit inclined to kill them both off and standardize on factorial()
> (not numeric_fac).

Works for me. !! hasn't been marked as deprecated in the
documentation, only the operator comment, which probably not many
people look at. But I don't see a problem updating the documentation
now to say:

- !! is going away, use factorial()
- ! is going away, use factorial()
- postfix operators are going away

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

Commits

  1. Remove precedence hacks no longer needed without postfix operators.

  2. Allow most keywords to be used as column labels without requiring AS.

  3. Remove support for postfix (right-unary) operators.

  4. Remove factorial operators, leaving only the factorial() function.

  5. Further refine patch for commenting operator implementation functions.