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Google's new pipe syntax in SQL

simonwillison.net

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Re: Google's new pipe syntax in SQL

#91

Post by mav3ri3k »

The first piped query language I used was Nushell's implementation of wide-column tables. PRQL offers almost similar approach which I have loved dearly. It also maps to different SQL dialects. There is also proposal to work on type system: https://github.com/PRQL/prql/issues/381.

Google has now proposed a syntax inspired by these approaches. However, I am afraid how well it would be adopted. As someone new to SQL, nearly every DB seem to provide its own SQL dialect which becomes cumbersome very quickly.

Whereas PRQL feels something like Apache Arrow which can map to other dialects.

Re: Google's new pipe syntax in SQL

#92

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #56
aragonite wrote: post #47

> This remains a long-standing pet peeve of mine. PDFs like this are horrible to read on mobile phones, hard to copy-and-paste from ... I've never understood why copying text from digitally native PDFs (created directly from digital source files, rather than by OCR-ing scanned images) is so often such a poor experience. Even PDFs produced from LaTex often contain undesirable ligatures in the copied text like fi and fl.…

> Is it due to something inherent in PDF technology? Exactly. PDF doesn't have instructions to say "render this paragraph of text in this box", it has instructions to say "render each of these glyphs at each of these x,y coordinates". It was never designed to have text extracted from it. So trying to turn it back into text involves a lot of heuristics and guesswork, like where enough separation between characters sho…

[deleted]

Re: Google's new pipe syntax in SQL

#93

Post by aidos »

willvarfar wrote: post #84
Blackthorn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FROM first would be nothing short of incredible. I can only hope that Postgres and others can find it within themselves to get together and standardize on such an extension!

Yeap I didn't know DuckDB supported it already! Being able to do SELECT FROM WHERE in any order and allowing multiple WHEREs and AGGREGATE etc, combined with supporting trailing commas, makes copy pasting templating and reusing and code-generating SQL so much easier. FROM table ...

What’s group-by-all? Sounds like distinct?

Re: Google's new pipe syntax in SQL

#94

Post by jonathanyc »

aragonite wrote: post #47

> This remains a long-standing pet peeve of mine. PDFs like this are horrible to read on mobile phones, hard to copy-and-paste from ... I've never understood why copying text from digitally native PDFs (created directly from digital source files, rather than by OCR-ing scanned images) is so often such a poor experience. Even PDFs produced from LaTex often contain undesirable ligatures in the copied text like fi and fl.…

PDF natively supports selectable/extractable text. Section 9.10 of ISO 32000 is literally “Extraction of Text Content.” I’ve implemented it myself in production software.

There are many good reasons why PDF has a “render glyph” instruction instead of a “render string”. In particular your printer and your PDF viewer should not need to have the same text shaping and layout algorithms in order for the PDF to render the same. Oops, your printer runs a different version of Harfbuzz!

The sibling comment is right that a lot depends on the software that produced the PDF. It’s important to be accurate about where the blame lies. I don’t blame the x86 ISA or the C++ standards committee when an Electron app uses too much memory.

Re: Google's new pipe syntax in SQL

#96

Post by adrian_b »

simonw wrote: post #68
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #55

As to the writer's problem with PDFs on the web: they aren't for reactive web app viewing on mobile phones. Not everything has to be. If you reeeeeeeally need to read that research paper, find a screen that's bigger than 3" wide.

Why shouldn’t I read research papers on my phone? That’s where I read almost everything else.

Even when reading on the phone, I do not understand the complaint against the two-column format.

The one-column format is fine on a large monitor, but on a small phone I prefer narrower columns, because a wide column would either make the text too small or it would require horizontal panning while reading.

So I consider the two-column format as better for phones, not worse.

Re: Google's new pipe syntax in SQL

#97

Post by isoprophlex »

I love the idea but something in my brain starts to itch when I see that pipe operator

     |>
What IS that thing? A unix pipe that got confused with a redirect? A weird smiley of a bird wearing sunglasses?

It'll take some getting used to, for me...

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