[postgis-devel] Function Removal

Regina Obe lr at pcorp.us
Thu Dec 17 14:19:38 PST 2020


> Since they've come in we've really under-used named parameters. Some of
> that because of legacy, some of it because of mental inertia. But for
these
> kinds of things they seem pretty ideal to me. Mean what you say, say what
> you mean, have what your parameters mean be clear instead of opaque. A
> good habit, all in all.
> 
> P
> 
In the beginning I thought named args were great, but I've come to think of
them as being a little evil.
Don't get me wrong -- they are indispensable in raster and pgRouting, cause
there is a butt load of arguments and it's hard to undo or even questionable
if we should.

But for cases where we have few args, I find the evilness much worse than
the disease they are there to cure.

Mostly because of our indecision with coming up with good names and then
changing our mind 
and then the fact our names in the docs don't even always match the named
args ones we have .

Remember Paul when your OCD kicked in and you decided to rename an arg?

Oops we can't change the name of the arg without dropping the function oops
we can't rename it because what if someone is using the name.

So I don't care what the OGC says

ST_Point(x,y, srid)

With last arg always meaning srid seems clearest to me.

No overloading with z,m etc.

Have separate named functions for that.



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