Hi,
I think that createuser/drouser reference documentation could be
enhanced for username param. There is:
"createuser is a wrapper around the SQL command CREATE ROLE. There is
no effective difference between creating users via this utility and
via other methods for accessing the server."
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/app-createuser.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/app-dropuser.html
But createuser and dropuser wrappers in some cases are doing implicit
quoting (when CREATE ROLE is not), which I think is not fully known
and is undocumented here. For example:
createuser -SDRe user -- reserved in PostgreSQL
CREATE ROLE "user" NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE INHERIT LOGIN;
createuser -SDRe myuser
CREATE ROLE myuser NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE INHERIT LOGIN;
createuser -SDRe MYuser
CREATE ROLE "MYuser" NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE INHERIT LOGIN;
psql postgres
ALTER ROLE MYuser CREATEDB; -- fatal mistake, it works for myuser
delimited identifier
ALTER ROLE
ALTER ROLE "MYuser" CREATEDB; -- ok, quoted identifier
ALTER ROLE
ALTER ROLE user CREATEDB;
ERROR: syntax error at or near "user"
LINE 1: ALTER ROLE user CREATEDB;
^
postgres=# ALTER ROLE "user" CREATEDB;
ALTER ROLE
Regards,
Grzegorz Szpetkowski