On Tue, Sep 11, 2007 at 02:28:24PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: > "George Pavlov" <gpavlov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> From: David Fetter [mailto:david@xxxxxxxxxx] > >> This case statement returns true when z factorial is zero, so I'd > >> recommend the SQL standard <> or IS NOT DISTINCT FROM instead. > > > i do hate potential ambiguity... the != was something stuck in my brain > > from old sybase, i think. i always liked != ("not equals") as more > > intuitive than <> ("less than, greater than"???), but i will have to > > change my ways, especially if "the standard" says so. > > The notion that != might be scanned as two operators whereas <> would > not be is nonsense. I assume David was just joking. My mistake. I believe that foo!=bar without white space should simply error out because there is no reasonable, unambiguous way to parse it. Here's what we get right now: test=# SELECT (2! =0); ?column? ---------- f (1 row) test=# SELECT (2!=0); ?column? ---------- t (1 row) test=# SELECT (2 !=0); ?column? ---------- t (1 row) test=# SELECT (2 ! =0); ?column? ---------- f (1 row) test=# SELECT (2 != 0); ?column? ---------- t (1 row) test=# SELECT (2 ! = 0); ?column? ---------- f (1 row) -- David Fetter <david@xxxxxxxxxx> http://fetter.org/ phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Skype: davidfetter Remember to vote! Consider donating to PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
