How to express long list of OR statements (preferably multiline?)

[strokirk]

I often need to add many OR conditions to my WHERE clauses, and writing them on multiple lines helps with readability.

SELECT id, foo, bar
FROM foo
WHERE foo = 1
   OR foo = 3
   OR bar = 9
   OR (bar = 10 AND foo = 1)

How can I express this in PRQL? From what I can tell, it's not currently allowed to add newlines into the filter pipeline, even if you surround it with parenthesis?

[max-sixty]

This is somewhat related to #819

I think we'd be open to the suggestion there. Would that solve this case?

[strokirk]

Thanks for the reply! I've only spend about an hour with PRQL, so can't speak with too much confidence, but when I started out trying, this was my naive attempt:

# first try
filter (
  or foo = 1
  or foo = 3
  # ...
)

# second try
filter (
     foo = 1
  or foo = 3
  # ...
)

[strokirk]

Another approach could be to introduce two new, nestable keywords that takes lists of expressions:

filter any [
  foo = 1,
  foo = 3,
  any [
    bar = 4,
    foo = "foo",
    all [
       bar = 2,
       foo = 2,
    ],
  ],
]

[max-sixty]

Yes, any and all could be good, I like that idea. Feel free to open an issue proposing that (mostly just with your example). FYI the = would be == in PRQL.

Just to confirm, did you see the proposal in #819? That would solve the general multiline problem.

[strokirk]

@max-sixty Yes, I personally think requiring \ backslashes would go against the general usefulness of PRQL in having a clean, easy to write, easy to read syntax, where each line can be individually comment out and still leave the query working, so for me it would not be an optimal solution. Better than nothing, but a parenthesis with any allowed whitespace in it would be much easier to use.

[max-sixty]

Yes agree. I think an all & any would be the nice solution, and #819 would be a fallback for other general cases. (and would be easier to implement right away)