Why do the release notes say this, under plperl:
* PL/Perl subroutines are now given names (Tim Bunce) This is for the use of profiling and code coverage tools.
DIDN'T THEY HAVE NAMES BEFORE?
No they didn't, from perl's perspective, which is what this is about.
They had names from Postgres' POV, but those names were and are
invisible to perl. PL/Perl functions are (references to) anonymous
subroutines. If you say in perl:
my $foo = sub { $bar = 1; };
the subroutine has no name. The only thing that has a name is the
reference to it, which is quite a different thing. PL/Perl functions are
created using this sort of mechanism. The change that has been made is
to decorate them with names that can be used by profilers etc., although
the names can't be used to call them directly, IIRC.
If whoever put this in the release notes had bothered to ask I am sure
we would have been happy to explain.
cheers
andrew
