> temp_buffers is actually special-cased in the code because
>
> /*
> * We show the GUC var until local buffers have been initialized, and
> * NLocBuffer afterwards.
> */
>
> It is not clear to me right now why that is a good idea. But it is only
> this one paramter.
OK, well that's not so bad then, although it would be nice to make it
consistent.
> The actual logic that SHOW uses in the general case is to reformat the value
> with the largest unit that allows for an integer value to be presented. So
> this is neither your nor Greg's idea, but I think it gives useful behavior
> in practice.
Yes, that's a totally sensible choice as well. What do you think of
the idea of always requiring an explicit unit, either by deprecating
blocks as a unit altogether, or pushing users to specify "blocks" in
that case? It seemed to me from reading your previous response that
you thought this would make it more possible to be more flexible about
how MB, GB, etc. are specified, although I'm not exactly sure what the
relationship is.
...Robert