Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> But what it *produces* is a string. �For comparison, the
>> SQL-standard-specified array_agg produces arrays, but what it
>> acts on isn't an array.
> This point is well-taken, but naming it string_agg() because it
> produces a string doesn't seem quite descriptive enough. We might
> someday (if we don't already) have a number of aggregates that produce
> an output that is a string; we can't name them all by the output type.
True, but the same point could be made against array_agg, and that
didn't stop the committee from choosing that name. As long as
string_agg is the "most obvious" aggregate-to-string functionality,
which ISTM it is, I think it's all right for it to have pride of place
in naming.
regards, tom lane
