Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> * Robert Haas (robertmhaas@gmail.com) wrote:
>> I'm still not used to the change that I have to use \d+ rather than \d
>> to see the view definition. It's the #1 thing I want to see when
>> examining a view, and since 2fe1b4dd651917aad2accac7ba8adb44d9f54930 I
>> have to remember to stick a + sign in there. So, in short, I agree.
> I definitely see the argument of "\d on a view used to give me the view
> def and now it's almost useless and I have to remember to \d+ all the
> time", but I also think that I might be able to retrain my fingers to
> do \sv for views more easily than always remembering to add a '+' to \d,
> which I use much more frequently than \sv or \d+.
I'm unimpressed with the "I can retrain" argument, because that only
applies to people who exclusively use the latest and greatest. \sv
didn't exist before 9.6, so if I relearn to use that, it'll fail on me
anytime I'm using a pre-9.6 psql, which is going to be a significant
percentage of the time for awhile to come.
Some quick digging says that \d on a view included the view definition
in a footer since the very beginning (7.0 era, see commit a45195a19) and
we changed it in 9.0 to require +. That's a heck of a lot of history
and fingertip knowledge to override on the strength of one man's
complaint, even if he is the man who made it that way in the first place.
I also note that getting into the habit of using "\d+" to see view
definitions didn't create any major problems when using older psqls.
(BTW, \sf has been there since 9.1, which means that equating the
compatibility situations for views and functions is a fallacy.)
regards, tom lane