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Need Help Naming Result Set Testing Functions

I’ve been thinking more since I posted about testing SQL result sets, and I think I’ve settled on two sets of functions for pgTAP: one that tests two SQL queries (though you will be encouraged to use a prepared statement), and one to test two cursors. I’m thinking of naming them:

  • query_gets()
  • cursor_gets()

I had been planning on *_returns() or *_yields(), but they didn’t feel right. “Returns” implies that I would be passing a query and a data structure (to me at least), and while I want to support that, too, it’s not what I was looking for right now. “Yield,” on the other hand, is more related to set-returning functions in my mind (even if PL/pgSQL doesn’t use that term). Anyway, I like the use of “gets” because it’s short and pretty unambiguous.

These function will compare query results as unordered sets, but I want variants that test ordered sets, as well. I’ve been struggling to come up with a decent name for these variants, but not liking any very well. The obvious ones are:

  • ordered_query_gets()
  • ordered_cursor_gets()

And:

  • sorted_query_gets()
  • sorted_cursor_gets()

But these are kind of long for functions that will be, I believe, used frequently. I could just add a character to get the same idea, in the spirit of sprintf:

  • oquery_gets()
  • ocursor_gets()

Or:

  • squery_gets()
  • scursor_gets()

I think that these are okay, but might be somewhat confusing. I think that the “s” variant probably won’t fly, since for sprintf and friends, the “s” stands for “string.” So I’m leaning towards the “o” variants.

But I’m throwing it out there for the masses to make suggestions: Got any ideas for better function names? Are there some relational terms for ordered sets, for example, that might make more sense? What do you think?

As a side note, I’m also considering:

  • col_is() to compare the result of a single column query to an array or other query. This would need an ordered variant, as well.
  • row_is(), although I have no idea how I’d be able to support passing a row expression to a function, since PostgreSQL doesn’t allow RECORDs to be passed to functions.

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