Re: pgsql-server/ oc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml rc/bac ...

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> suggest that you're thinking that way.  What exactly do you have in
> >> mind here?  Certainly the client is not going to determine the
> >> newline format for COPY TO STDOUT unless it does translation.
>
> > My idea was that if the client opens a file to dump the STDOUT data, it
> > will opened in text mode, and that will have \r\n for Win32 and \n for
> > Unix.
>
> But it would probably be a bad idea for the client to open such a file
> in text mode.  We are going to have COPY BINARY TO STDOUT/FROM STDIN
> real soon now (like probably today or tomorrow ;-)).  Unless the client
> takes the trouble to determine whether the copy is text or binary,
> opening the file in text mode will be the Wrong Thing.  So I think that
> a decision to always send LF on-the-wire will result in Windows users
> seeing LF-newline dump files.  Not sure how unhappy that will make them.
>
> I personally don't have a problem with the approach; I was just
> wondering if it really does what you intend.

I think that is fine.  pg_dump is the one that uses STDIN/STDOUT the
most, and that will open as text/binary as appropriate.  I see now that
pg_dump seems to only open in binary so I may have to look at that, but
clearly it is only applications that should control this stuff --- the
wire protocol should not.

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