Re: Operator class group proposal - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Alvaro Herrera
Subject Re: Operator class group proposal
Date
Msg-id 20061216162313.GB14237@alvh.no-ip.org
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Operator class group proposal  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: Operator class group proposal
Re: Operator class group proposal
List pgsql-hackers
Tom Lane wrote:
> Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> > Perhaps something like
> 
> > Operator Class
> > and
> > Data Type Class
> 
> > Data type classes happens to involve operator classes but it sounds like
> > you're looking for them to specify other behaviours of how data types
> > inter-relate than just their operator classes anyways.
> 
> Well, actually I think of this more as something that tells me how a
> bunch of *operators* relate.  As an example, "=" and friends over the
> string datatypes will be one group, and "~=~" and friends will be
> another group over the very same types.  So to me "data type class"
> would really miss the point.
> 
> The alternatives I'd been thinking about were "operator set" and
> "operator collection", but I don't really see any advantage over
> "operator group" for either ...

I guess the problem is finding a term that makes it very obvious that is
"bigger than a class", but at the same time conveying the fact that you
can have lone operators in there, as well as whole classes.

So "collection", "group" and "set" fail because they can be easily seen
as being in the same category as a "class": a bunch of things.  How
would anybody tell which one is the bigger one?

The "superclass" term passes that test, but fails because it is somehow
expected that you can't put a class inside a superclass.

How about "hyperclass" then? :-)  Maybe "school" :-D

Maybe somebody should ask a philologist about a greek or latin prefix
with that meaning.


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