On 2023-08-29 14:44:48 -0600, Stuart McGraw wrote:
> On 8/29/23 13:27, Tom Lane wrote:
> > Fixing \dp to honor "\pset null" for this might be a reasonable
> > thing to do too. I'm actually a bit surprised that that doesn't
> > work already.
>
> That change would still require someone using \dp to realize that
> the "Access privileges" value could be either '' or NULL (I guess
> that could be pointed out more obviously in the psql doc), and then
> do a '\pset null' before doing \dp? That seems a little inconvenient.
Or just always do a \pset null. For me printing NULL the same as an
empty string is just as confusing in normal tables, so that's the first
line in my ~/.psqlrc. YMMV, of course.
But I guess the point is that people who do \pset null expect to be able
to distinguish '' and NULL visually and might be surprised if that
doesn't work everywhere, while people who don't \pset null know that ''
and NULL are visually indistinguishable and that they may need some
other way to distinguish them if the difference matters.
So +1 for me fixing \dp to honor "\pset null".
hp
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_ | Peter J. Holzer | Story must make more sense than reality.
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| | | hjp@hjp.at | -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
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