Horton

Deprecating postfix and factorial operators in PostgreSQL 13

Mark Dilger <mark.dilger@enterprisedb.com>

View thread View on postgr.es
From: Mark Dilger <mark.dilger@enterprisedb.com>
To: pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, John Naylor <john.naylor@2ndquadrant.com>, Vik Fearing <vik@postgresfriends.org>, Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com>
Date: 2020-08-27T16:13:49Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Attachments

Hackers,

Over in [1] we have been discussing the deprecation of postfix operators, with the general consensus that deprecation warnings should be included in this upcoming release and postfix operator support should be removed in PostgreSQL 14.  Since not all people who follow -hackers will necessarily have been following that thread, I am creating this new thread, with a patch which adds the deprecation notices, for your consideration.
 
The only postfix operator we ship in the standard catalogs is the factorial operator (!), which is deprecated by this patch.

The standard catalogs also include a prefix factorial operator (!!) which has been deprecated since 2011.

The deprecation warnings included in this patch warn that postfix operator support, along with both postfix ! and prefix !! factorial operators, will be removed in PostgreSQL 14.

Some of the deprecation verbiage supplied by John Naylor, some by me:

Commits

  1. Mark factorial operator, and postfix operators in general, as deprecated.