Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@BlueTreble.com> writes: > On 3/21/16 5:03 PM, Merlin Moncure wrote: >> in Oracle, you'd simply do: >> LogIt('I did something');
> It would be *great* if we could support that in plpgsql.
FWIW, I'm hesitant to just start accepting that syntax as if it were an equivalent to "SELECT f(x)" or "PERFORM f(x)". I think that someday we will want to have the ability to have pass-by-reference parameters to functions, and that's a fundamentally incompatible behavior so it ought to be invoked by a new syntax. I'd like to save "f(x)" as a bare statement for that purpose. We could also consider inventing "CALL f(x)"; but supposing that we already had both "CALL f(x)" (which would allow x to be pass-by-ref and possibly modified) and "SELECT f(x)" (which would not), which one would you assign bare "f(x)" to mean? It should be "CALL f(x)", not least because that would be the semantics most comparable to Oracle's behavior (since they have pass-by-ref parameters already).
I can live with SELECT fx(x). It is little bit dangerous, but this risk can be easy detected by plpgsql_check.
So, I'm -1 on not having any keyword at all. I have no objection to Merlin's proposal though. I agree that PERFORM is starting to look a bit silly, since it doesn't play with WITH for instance.
Isn't time to fix PERFORM instead?
> While we're on the subject, it'd be great if variable := SELECT ... > worked too.
It does, though you might need parens around the sub-select.