Re: PQfnumber and quoted identifiers

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> >> Since this behavior was undocumented and no one had noticed it in the last
> >> 10 years, I think we can away with removing it.
> 
> > I agree.  I would never expect to add quotes to a C string to preserve
> > case (outside SQL), and the fact that PQfname doesn't return the string
> > in quotes is another inconsistency.
> 
> Actually I was planning to quiz you about the history.  I can see from
> the CVS logs that you installed all the patches that added the
> quoting/downcasing behavior.  Was there any discussion about it?
> I dug through the mail archives and found
> 
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-ports/1997-05/msg00081.php
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/1997-05/msg00023.php
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/1997-11/msg00170.php
> 
> but I could not find any actual discussion about whether there was a
> real bug or whether the complainants should be told to fix their code.

Wow, 1997 --- seems like a time long ago.

As I remember, I crudely coded up a fix for the complaint --- that's the
way we did it back then.  :-)

There probably wasn't a lot of discussion, if any --- people complained,
and we coded to fix the complaint.  In hindsight, I should have told
them the API was working properly, but the idea of telling a user they
were wrong wasn't something we did back then --- we needed every user we
could get.

My guess is that the email reports from May, 1997 were in my mailbox,
and in Novemeber I saw it again (I was a volunteer then) and I coded up
the fix, posted it to the lists, then applied it.  No one said anything
about it, so it stayed in.

Strange no one complained about it until now.  I suppose that is because
few folks use that function _and_ upper-case identifiers, as you
mentioned.  We could code the proper behavior, post a mention on
general,  and document it in the release notes, or wait for 7.5, or do
nothing.

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
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