Tom,
OK, figured out what happened. I submitted the desired change,
*coincidentally* right before the error message got broken. As a result, I
mistakenly believed that the behaviour had been fixed by someone else before
I could get to a patch. Since I was travelling at the time (OSCON) I didn't
check to see that there actually had been a patch. OOops.
I will have to find standards documentation on this grey area and hopefully
submit something for 8.3.
--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco