Re: dollar quoting and pg_dump

Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> ... using it in dumping function bodies and comments on all objects, 
> with a prefix argument of "function" and "comment" respectively. There 
> might be other places where we want to use dollar quoting, but this 
> would be a good start, ISTM.

Do we really need to be that verbose?  Why not start with the minimal $$
and extend only if needed?  On the KISS principle, trying "$$", "$X$",
"$XX$", "$XXX$", etc seems sufficient.

For that matter, I'm not convinced we should use $$ for comments.  They
don't have nearly the problem that functions do with embedded quotes.

A thought: maybe just put this logic into the regular
appendStringLiteral routine, and trigger it when the string contains any
quotes or backslashes; if it has none, you can just use quotes ...

BTW, I've been holding off making this change myself, realizing that it
will completely break backwards compatibility of pg_dump output to 7.4
and earlier.  Not sure if anyone is trying to use CVS tip pg_dump with
older releases, but it seems possible given that the dump ordering issue
is finally solved.  Might be a good idea to make it disablable with a
fallback to regular quoting.
        regards, tom lane