Aidan Van Dyk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > But one of the interesting things is that psql has an is *interactive* > mode (something the GNU utils don't have to worry about). So *when* you > choose to figure out your columns is important, and really impacts > behaviour too.
Well, COLUMNS has no hope of tracking on-the-fly changes of window size, which is why the ioctl should take precedence over it. > Correctly documenting it is good, just as the version of GNU ls I have > on Debian, where I see: > `-w' > `--width=COLS' > Assume the screen is COLS columns wide. The default is taken from > the terminal settings if possible; otherwise the environment > variable `COLUMNS' is used if it is set; otherwise the default is > 80. Fedora 8 has the same wording in "info ls". Possibly Bruce was reading the man page, which is not as complete (and admits it). Experimentation on OS X (BSD clone) shows that its "ls" believes COLUMNS in preference to ioctl, so there's clearly scope for argument; but on the whole I think we should follow the GNU behavior. The BSD version's behavior is full of enormous amounts of historical cruft (and its man page admits that) --- I suspect the behavior on this point "just grew" instead of being carefully thought about. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers