Re: Patch for Improved Syntax Error Reporting

Email added to TODO.detail.


> Dave Page <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk> writes:
> > Oh, I quite agree. I'm not adverse to updating my code, I just want to avoid
> > users getting misleading messages until I come up with those updates.
>
> Hmm ... if they were actively misleading then I'd share your concern.
>
> I guess what you're thinking is that the error offset reported by the
> backend won't correspond directly to what the user typed, and if the
> user tries to use the offset to manually count off characters, he may
> arrive at the wrong place?  Good point.  I'm not sure whether a message
> like
>
>     ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near 'frum';
>     POSITION: 42
>
> would be likely to encourage people to try that.  Thoughts?  (I do think
> this is a good argument for not embedding the position straight into the
> main error message though...)
>
> One possible compromise is to combine the straight character-offset
> approach with a simplistic context display:
>
>     ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near 'frum';
>     POSITION: 42  ... oid,relname FRUM ...
>
> The idea is to define the "POSITION" field as an integer offset possibly
> followed by whitespace and noise words.  An updated client would grab
> the offset, ignore the rest of the field, and do the right thing.  A
> not-updated client would display the entire message, and with any luck
> the user would read it correctly.
>
>             regards, tom lane
>
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