Re: Add switches for DELIMITER and NULL in pg_dump COPY

On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 11:03:00AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> David Fetter <david@fetter.org> writes:
> > From the earlier discussion, it appears that there is a variety of
> > opinions on what the COPY delimiter should be in pg_dump.  This
> > patch allows people to set it and the NULL string.
>
> Did anyone provide a convincing use case for this?

I've had one so far, and it was enough to cause me to make a special
patched version of pg_dump.  To get some idea of how drastic that was,
consider that I think it's generally bad practice to compile from
source because it can take you too far off the "generally supported
software" map.  The case I had was making a database with a schema and
initial data whose dump output gets checked into a source code
management system.  Those initial data sets, which can change--for
example when the corresponding ISO codes do--may be in many different
tables, so the easiest way to do this is to make the dump file as easy
as possible to edit.

> It's of zero value from the perspective of pg_dump itself; the only
> possible argument is that it makes it easier for program-foo to
> parse the output of pg_dump.  But I don't see any programs around to
> parse arbitrary SQL scripts, especially not the pretty-PG-specific
> scripts that pg_dump emits.

It's less about program-foo parsing than about multi-table data
management, as above.  However, I'm sure that there are people who
will find other uses for it.

> I think it much more likely that people needing this sort of thing would
> be using something like "psql -c 'copy foo to stdout'", so as to get the
> data without any added overhead.

The one-table-at-a-time approach is quite error-prone for large
numbers of tables and/or large data sets.

> So this seems like mere creeping featurism to me.  pg_dump has too
> many switches already.

I've been careful to see to it that only people who use the switches
are affected by it.  I am also volunteering to do ongoing maintenance
of this feature. :)

Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter david@fetter.org http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778

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