Re: pg_basebackup and error messages dependent on the order of the arguments

"Daniel Westermann (DWE)" <daniel.westermann@dbi-services.com> writes:
>> Taking a closer look, many of the other switches-requiring-an-argument
>> also just absorb "optarg" without checking its value till much later,
>> so I'm not sure how far we could move the needle by special-casing
>> --compress.

> My point was not so much about --compress but rather giving a good error message.

Right, and my point was that the issue is bigger than --compress.
For example, you get exactly the same misbehavior with

$ pg_basebackup --checkpoint=fast --format=t -d --pgdata=/var/tmp/dummy
pg_basebackup: error: must specify output directory or backup target
pg_basebackup: hint: Try "pg_basebackup --help" for more information.

I'm not sure how to solve the problem once you consider this larger
scope.  I don't think we could forbid arguments beginning with "-" for
all of these switches.

            regards, tom lane