Re: \d+ for long view definitions?

On sön, 2009-08-30 at 18:43 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> > Using \d on, say, information schema views is completely hilarious
> > because the column name/data type information is usually scrolled off
> > the screen by the immense view definition.
> 
> > Could we change this perhaps so that the full view definition is only
> > shown with \d+ when the view definition is longer than N characters or N
> > lines or some other suitable cutoff.  Ideas?
> 
> The same complaint could be made for any table with more than
> twenty-some columns.

I guess my premise is that if I use \d, I'm primarily interested in the
column names and types.  The view definition is secondary.  If the view
definition is a single line or uses a single table, it's interesting
because it might describe something about the schema design, but if it's
20 lines it's an implementation detail.

I think this is quite similar to showing the function definition only
with \df+.  If I'm looking at the function, I'm usually only looking for
name and parameter information, not the full source code.

>   Seems like a more general answer would be
> for \d output to go through the pager ...

That should also be fixed, but I'm not sure if it really does it for me.