Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> * Peter Eisentraut (peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com) wrote:
>> Previous discussion:
>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/1285093687.5468.18.camel%40vanquo.pezone.net
> Thanks for that, but, frankly, it seems like most were in agreement that
> we should go ahead and get rid of the trailing whitespace from psql's
> output. The last couple emails on that thread hardly seems like a
> critical issue (and I'm not sure why we couldn't eliminate that
> whitespace and then programmatically forbid trailing whitespace
> anyway..).
The real problem here, IMO, is the break in expected regression outputs.
The previous thread mainly discussed that in terms of its impact on
third-party tests using pg_regress, but for our own purposes it would be
just as nasty to need to adjust every single test case we back-patch for
the next five years.
The way I read that thread is that people were left feeling that it
was probably more work than it was worth. That's what I'm thinking,
anyway.
Thinking about this, I'm wondering what is the connection between
what psql does and what should be in the SGML (or XML) docs, anyway.
Nobody says boo when we have to do s/</</g to an example in order
to put it in the docs; why is stripping trailing whitespace a bigger
issue?
regards, tom lane