Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> If we do want to go
> with a single flag character, maybe it should just be a single or
> double quote:
> :'foo - quote as a literal
> :"foo - quote as an ident
I would've proposed that myself if I thought it would work, but I'm
afraid that it will wreak complete chaos from a parsing standpoint.
Half the tools in the world will think this is an incomplete literal,
and I'm not even very sure you could keep psql itself from getting
confused.
Hmm ... actually, though, what about combining the ideas:
:'foo' - quote as a literal:"foo" - quote as an ident
This leaves us with nothing much as far as extensibility, but from
a mnemonic standpoint it's a large win.
regards, tom lane