Re: Doing better at HINTing an appropriate column within errorMissingColumn()

Peter Geoghegan <pg@heroku.com> writes:
> Maybe that's just a matter of phrasing the message appropriately. A
> more guarded message, that suggests that "foobar" is the *best* match
> is correct at least on its own terms (terms that are self evident).
> This does pretty effectively communicate to the user that they should
> totally rethink not just the column name, but perhaps the entire
> query. On the other hand, showing nothing communicates nothing.

I don't especially buy that argument.  As soon as the user's gotten used
to hints of this sort, the absence of a hint communicates plenty.

In any case, people have now cited two different systems with suggestion
capability, and neither of them behaves as you're arguing for.  The lack
of precedent should give you pause, unless you can point to widely-used
systems that do what you have in mind.
        regards, tom lane