Re: oddity with ALTER ROLE/USER

Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com> writes:
> I noticed that ALTER ROLE/USER succeeds even when called without any
> options:

> postgres=# alter user foo;
> ALTER ROLE
> postgres=# alter role foo;
> ALTER ROLE
> postgres=# alter group foo;
> ERROR:  syntax error at or near ";"
> LINE 1: alter group foo;

> That seems odd, does nothing useful, and is inconsistent with, for
> example, ALTER GROUP as shown above.

> Proposed patch attached.

If you want to make it act like alter group, why not make it act
like alter group?  That is, the way to fix this is to change the
grammar so that AlterOptRoleList doesn't permit an expansion with
zero list elements.

Having said that, I can't get excited about changing this at all.
Nobody will thank us for it, and someone might complain.

            regards, tom lane