Re: pg_dump exclusion switches and functions/types

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 12:07:29PM -0500, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 07, 2006 at 06:22:19PM -0700, David Fetter wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 06, 2006 at 10:28:21PM -0400, Gregory Stark wrote:
> > > Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
> > > 
> > > > The existing patch's behavior is that "the rightmost switch wins",
> > > > ie, if an object's name matches more than one pattern then it is
> > > > included or excluded according to the rightmost switch it matches.
> > > > This is, erm, poorly documented, but it seems like useful behavior
> > > > so I don't have an objection myself.
> > > 
> > > I don't know, it sounds like it's the source of the confusion you
> > > identify later.
> > > 
> > > My first thought is that the rule should be to apply all the
> > > inclusion switches (implicitly including everything if there are
> > > none), then apply all the exclusion switches.
> > 
> > +1 :)
> > 
> > Order-dependent switches are a giant foot gun.
> 
> They're also very powerful, as anyone who's ever used them in a
> non-trivial rsync (or rdiff-backup) scenareo can tell you. What if
> you want to exclude all of a schema except for a few objects
> (granted, right now we're limited to just tables...)?

You make an important distinction here, and thanks for doing that. :)

IMHO, order-dependent switches are appropriate for a configuration
file and inappropriate for the command line.  The pg_hba.conf file is
a great example of a place where order dependence is a good idea.

Cheers,
D
-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778        AIM: dfetter666                             Skype: davidfetter

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