Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> But I'm not actually sure we should be preventing mix & match of files
> from different dumps. It might be very useful to do just that sometimes,
> like restoring a recent backup, with the contents of one table replaced
> with older data. A warning would be ok, though.
+1. This mechanism seems like a solution in search of a problem.
Just lose the whole thing, and instead fix pg_dump to complain if
the target directory isn't empty. That should be sufficient to guard
against accidental mixing of different dumps, and as Heikki says
there's not a good reason to prevent intentional mixing.
regards, tom lane