On 2024-11-04 16:13 +0100, Matthias van de Meent wrote: > On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 at 15:41, Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> wrote: > > > > Someone emailed me privately saying they were confused because they > > thought pg_dump --no-comments would remove SQL comments, not the SQL > > COMMENT commands. Is this something worth clarifying in our docs? I am > > not even sure how I would express it. It currently says: > > > > --no-comments > > Do not dump comments. > > > > We could change it to: > > > > --no-comments > > Do not dump SQL COMMENT commands > > I think that'd be more confusing, as SQL comments are /* */. There is > no SQL standard-prescribed COMMENT command (if our current docs are to > be believed, I don't have a recent version of ISO 9075 to verify that > claim).
I think Bruce's suggestion is pretty clear that it does not mean line or block comments, but rather the COMMENT command. But I also think that "SQL" in front of the command name is unnecessary because the man page uses the "FOOBAR command" form throughout, e.g.: --inserts Dump data as INSERT commands [...] Also, it doesn't really matter whether COMMENT is standard SQL. I guess the sole purpose of --no-comment is to make the dump more portable. But we don't mention that use case at all right now which would also apply to --no-{publications,security-labels,subscriptions}. > Maybe: "Do not dump database object comments", I think that would be confusing because --verbose already reads "output detailed object comments" which are in fact line comments. -- Erik