at the very least my Ubuntu Cosmic has createdb, createuser and createlang in user's space, and I had at least two cases when people were trying to use createuser to create a new OS user.
I would prefer them having pg_ prefix to have less confusion.
On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 02:31:14PM +0100, Fred .Flintstone wrote: >Many of these are gone in the modern PostgreSQL, a few remain. >https://packages.ubuntu.com/disco/amd64/postgresql-client-11/filelist > >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/clusterdb >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/createdb >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/createuser >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/dropdb >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/dropuser >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/pg_basebackup >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/pg_dump >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/pg_dumpall >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/pg_isready >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/pg_receivewal >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/pg_recvlogical >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/pg_restore >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/psql >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/reindexdb >/usr/lib/postgresql/11/bin/vacuumdb > >Can we rename clusterdb, reindexdb and vacuumdb to carry the pg_ prefix? >
I think the consensus in this thread (and the previous ancient ones) is that it's not worth it. It's one thing to introduce new commands with the pg_ prefix, and it's a completely different thing to rename existing ones. That has inherent costs, and as Tom pointed out the burden would fall on people using PostgreSQL (and that's rather undesirable).
I personally don't see why having commands without pg_ prefix would be an issue. Especially when placed in a separate directory, which eliminates the possibility of conflict with other commands.
regards
-- Tomas Vondra http://www.2ndQuadrant.com PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services