Re: Can we remove support for standard_conforming_strings = off yet?

Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:

On 2025-12-30 Tu 5:50 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

As I was working through it, I realized that there's one
potentially-nasty point that might cause upgrading problems.
To wit, pg_dump and pg_dumpall have historically replicated the
source server's standard_conforming_strings setting into their
output: they emit a SET command for that, and any string literals
appearing in views or the like will be escaped accordingly.
So if your old installation had standard_conforming_strings = off,
and all you have from it is existing pg_dump output (either text
or archive format), you are in a sticky situation because that
dump will not restore cleanly.

Have we ever promised that dumps made using pg_dump/pg_dumpall from 
other than the target version work?

We may not promise it, but I think we've always tried very hard to
not break old pg_dump files, precisely because they might be the only
available backup.

I don't see this as a big issue, unless I'm misunderstanding.

Personally I would call it a deal-breaker if I thought it'd affect
more than a very very tiny number of people.  But the entire premise
of this patch is that nobody is using standard_conforming_strings =
off in production anymore.  If that isn't true it's probably a
mistake to go forward anyway.
			

I think you're probably right that very few people are using it. Not sure how we'd find out if they are, though.

cheers

andrew

--
Andrew Dunstan
EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com