> xof@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > There is no first-class "identifier" type in PostgreSQL, so a function can't "return an identifier." It returns a string which might, when placed into a larger string and processed as SQL, be lexically correct as an identifier. It takes huge discipline always to say "the text of an identifier" when the context of discourse is established. But, yes, I agree, when I wrote this: « ...the value of "quote_ident()" rests on the distinction between a name (what you provide with the function's actual argument) and an identifier (what it returns). » that the context of discourse was indeed established. I should have made no such assumption and written this instead: « ...the value of "quote_ident()" rests on the distinction between the text of a name (what you provide with the function's actual argument) and the text of an identifier (what it returns). »
