Re: psql: default base and password reading

> Bruce Momjian writes:
>
> > Have you seen my later version that reads from stdin/stderr if /dev/tty
> > doesn't open.  How is that?
>
> Might as well use getpass() if available.  My man page says "A getpass
> function appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.", so it should be available on
> most systems.
>
> However, I'm afraid many users have set up their systems to read the
> password from stdin, so that should probably stay the default unless we
> take a user poll.

Vote request sent to 'general'.

Yes, a change will inconvenience some people and perhaps they will have
to resort to 'expect'.  However, I can't think of one piece of
significant software that reads from stdin by default rather than
/dev/tty.  It certainly makes this counter-intuitive:

    cat script | psql test

If 'test' requires a password, our current code requires the password to
be the first line in the script.  Though this can be convenient in some
cases, in most cases it is quite unexpected.


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