Pavel Stehule:
But in this case you could make variables and tables share the same namespace, i.e. forbid creating a variable with the same name as an already existing table.It helps, but not on 100% - there is a search path
I think we can ignore the search_path for this discussion. That's not a problem of variables vs tables, but just a search path related problem. It is exactly the same thing right now, when you create a new table x(x) in a schema which happens to be earlier in your search path.
The objection to the proposed approach for variables was that it would introduce *new* ambiguities, which Alvaro's suggestion avoids.
Best, Wolfgang
