On 11/22/2013 05:24 PM, AK wrote:
I am reading the following in the documentation: "Tip: A common mistake is to
write a semicolon immediately after BEGIN. This is incorrect and will result
in a syntax error."
So, "common mistake" means semicolons after BEGIN seem consistent to many
people - it seems consistent to me as well. If PostgreSql allowed them, we
would have one less rule to memorize, shorter documentation, less mistakes
and so on. In other words, without this limitation PostgreSql would be
slightly more useful, right?
What am I missing? Why do we need this rule? How is it making PostgreSql
better?
You're referring specifically to plpgsql, not to Postgres or SQL generally.
plpgsql is derived from PLSQL which is derived from Ada which has this
grammatical rule.
The explanation is this: only complete statements are followed by
semicolons. But in these languages, "begin" on its own is not a complete
statement. It's the start of a compound statement, the end of which will
be "end", which is indeed followed by a semicolon.
cheers
andrew
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