I wrote:
> Pavlo Golub <pavlo.golub@cybertec.at> writes:
>> I cannot find the reason why EDITOR value on Windows is quoted.
> The comment you quoted explains it: apparently people expect
> paths-with-spaces to work in that value without any manual quoting.
Actually, after digging in the git history and archives, the current
behavior seems to trace back to a discussion on pgsql-hackers on
2004-11-15. The thread linkage in the archives seems rather incomplete,
but it boiled down to this:
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/9045.1100539151%40sss.pgh.pa.us
ie, the argument that people could handle space-containing paths by
putting double quotes into the environment variable's value is just wrong.
Possibly Microsoft fixed that in the fifteen years since, but I'd want to
see some proof.
regards, tom lane