"Andrew Dunstan" <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> The CSV definition and its lack of formality is a complete red herring in
> this, as are references to Microsoft.
I think then you've missed the real issue.
> The real issue in what you say here is your suggestion that we might not be
> able to reproduce the input in some cases via a COPY CSV round trip.
No that's not the suggestion. The question is: what do you do when the next
version of Excel comes out and can't parse your CSV files any more? If you
change your format to match then you won't be able to parse old pg_dump files
any more. You'll end up with an option for each csv variant and then how does
the user know which option to use to read a given pg_dump archive?
And before you ask, yes, virtually every version of Excel has changed its csv
file format.
I think the problem here is that pg_dump is serving double duty as a
postgres->postgres tool and some people using it as a kind of batch COPY. What
benefit does it buy you over a script that runs COPY for each table if that's
what you want?
--
greg