The SQL standard does not have general functions-in-FROM, but it does
allow UNNEST() there (see the <collection derived table> production),
and the semantics of that are defined to include lateral references.
So spec compliance requires allowing lateral references within UNNEST()
even without an explicit LATERAL keyword. Rather than making UNNEST()
a special case, it seems best to extend this flexibility to any
function-in-FROM. We'll still allow LATERAL to be written explicitly
for clarity's sake, but it's now a noise word in this context.
In theory this change could result in a change in behavior of existing
queries, by allowing what had been an outer reference in a function-in-FROM
to be captured by an earlier FROM-item at the same level. However, all
pre-9.3 PG releases have a bug that causes them to match variable
references to earlier FROM-items in preference to outer references (and
then throw an error). So no previously-working query could contain the
type of ambiguity that would risk a change of behavior.
Per a suggestion from Andrew Gierth, though I didn't use his patch.
projects / postgresql / commit