On Sat, 2010-07-17 at 23:30 +0200, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote: > On 07/17/2010 04:02 PM, Robert Haas wrote: > > On Jul 16, 2010, at 11:02 PM, Stephen Frost<sfr...@snowman.net> wrote: > >> * Robert Haas (robertmh...@gmail.com) wrote: > >>> Why must the backslash commands be more powerful than any alternative > >>> we might come up with? > >> > >> Because they encode alot of information in a character- something which > >> is next to impossible to do in "english". > > > > I don't think that "terse" and "powerful" are the same thing. One of my > > beefs with the backslash commands is that the syntax is not cleanly > > extensible. We have S and + as postfix modifiers, and that's fairly > > comprehensible, but as soon as you think about going much further with it, > > it starts to seem like alphabet soup. > > > > In fact, we're pretty close to alphabet soup already. Without looking at > > the help, what does \db do? What are the commands to list casts, > > conversions, and comments, respectively? What syntax would you propose for > > a backslash command to list comments, but only those on a certain object > > type? If you don't think we should have a backslash command for that, can > > you write an SQL query that lists comments on built-in aggregates in less > > than two minutes? How many people do you think can do it at all? > > > > I think "LIST COMMENTS ON SYSTEM AGGREGATES" would be an epic step forward > > in usability. > > > uh oh - that actually sounds like a big step backwards to me - it's > inventing extremely verbose pseudo english syntax for something that we > currently do with a trivial and easy to remember backslash command.
By whose estimation? I hate the backslash commands and I have been using them longer than most. I do agree that the above is a bit verbose but it is also blatant as to what it is. > Do we really need to invent a completely new language for this? > Once you extend that syntax to what you are proposing (ie provide a way > to filter like "LIST COMMENTS ON SYSTEM AGGREGATES WITH NUMERIC INPUT") > you basically reinvented a query language - ever heard of SQL or QUEL? Really? Hmmm.... SELECT * FROM (where are system aggregates again?), oh right, pg_proc, what is the column that tells me it is a system aggregate? -- Do I filter by namespace? Oh, crimey, why can't I just type: SHOW COMMENTS ON SYSTEM AGGREGATES (or LIST) JD -- PostgreSQL.org Major Contributor Command Prompt, Inc: http://www.commandprompt.com/ - 509.416.6579 Consulting, Training, Support, Custom Development, Engineering -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
