Re: Can we remove support for standard_conforming_strings = off yet?

I wrote:

standard_conforming_strings has defaulted to ON since 2010 (see
0839f312e in the 9.1 release).  I propose that it's finally time to
force it on and get rid of code that supports the "off" setting.

Here's a draft patch series for that.

As I was working through it, I realized that there's one
potentially-nasty point that might cause upgrading problems.
To wit, pg_dump and pg_dumpall have historically replicated the
source server's standard_conforming_strings setting into their
output: they emit a SET command for that, and any string literals
appearing in views or the like will be escaped accordingly.
So if your old installation had standard_conforming_strings = off,
and all you have from it is existing pg_dump output (either text
or archive format), you are in a sticky situation because that
dump will not restore cleanly.  This isn't impossible to get
out of, but you'd probably have to stand up a pre-v19 server,
restore the dump into that, and take a fresh dump made with
standard_conforming_strings = on.  The alternative would be
manual correction of literals in the dump script, which seems
far too error-prone to be recommendable.

Have we ever promised that dumps made using pg_dump/pg_dumpall from other than the target version work?

I don't see this as a big issue, unless I'm misunderstanding.

cheers

andrew

--
Andrew Dunstan
EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com