Peter, I'm having second thoughts about this change:
2001-09-02 19:52 petere
* src/bin/psql/command.c: Parse the arguments of \connect as SQL
identifiers, so that they expose the expected behavior in
mixed-case situations.
bug report from James Pattie, 2001-08-31
which you made in response to bug #435,
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2001-08/msg00174.php
AFAIR there wasn't a whole lot of discussion at the time. Certainly
no one realized that this would have the effect of breaking pg_dump and
pg_dumpall for mixed-case database names and user names --- but it did.
Dump scripts used to not quote names in \connect commands. That worked
correctly with 7.1 psql, and does not work now.
A few days ago I committed changes to pg_dump and pg_dumpall to make
them put double quotes around mixed-case names in \connect commands.
But I am wondering whether it wouldn't be a better idea to revert both
that change and the psql one.
Allow me to point out some context. psql (and, I hope, all our other
command-line clients) does not case-fold database and user names when
they appear on a command line --- eg, psql -U JoeBlow JoesDatabase.
This is appropriate mainly because it's so dang painful to arrange for
double-quotes in a shell-command argument; you'd have to quote or escape
them, eg, psql -U '"JoeBlow"' '"JoesDatabase"'. (IIRC, we used to
case-fold command-line arguments, but realized it was a bad move.)
So the definitional question is really "are psql's backslash commands
more like shell commands, or more like SQL commands?". Put that way,
I don't think it's an entirely simple question. You could certainly
make an argument that the parameters of \connect ought to be treated
the same as psql's command-line parameters.
Probably on balance the new behavior would make more sense, if we were
working in a green field. But we are not. In particular, we have a
serious problem with lack of forward compatibility of 7.1 dumps. Yeah,
we can tell people to dump with the (not yet available) 7.2.1 pg_dump,
but that's cold comfort for someone who's already dumped and initdb'd
over his 7.1 installation.
I think the wisest course may be to revert to the 7.1 \connect behavior
and redefine that bug as user error. (After all, he might be happy now
with "\connect BUGS", but he still won't be happy with "psql BUGS".)
What do you think?
regards, tom lane