Ian Barwick <barwick@gmx.net> writes:
> So out with the candle wax and pins ;-). Am I right
> in thinking that the string returned by SELECT version()
> starts with the word "PostgreSQL" followed by:
> a space;
> a single digit indicating the major version number;
> a full stop / decimal point;
> a single digit indicating the minor version number;
> and either "interim release" number (e.g. ".1" in the case of 7.3.1), or
> "devel", "rc1" etc. ?
I would recommend parsing it the same way pg_dump does, see
_check_database_version(). Looks like it's basically skip-11-chars-
and-sscanf. Note the lack of assumptions about numbers of digits.
In the next protocol version update (hopefully 7.4) I would like to see
the basic version string (eg, "7.3.1" or "7.4devel") delivered to the
client automatically during connection startup and then available from a
libpq inquiry function. This would eliminate the need to call version()
explicitly and to know that you must skip "PostgreSQL " in its output.
However, it will only help for clients/libraries that are willing to
deal exclusively with 7.4-or-newer backends, so it will take a few
releases to become really useful.
regards, tom lane