Re: Overhauling GUCS

On Jun 5, 2008, at 14:47, Greg Smith wrote:

> This is why there's the emphasis on preserving comments as they pass  
> into the GUC structure and back to an output file.  This is one of  
> the implementation details I haven't fully made up my mind on:  how  
> to clearly label user comments in the postgresql.conf to distinguish  
> them from verbose ones added to the file.  I have no intention of  
> letting manual user edits go away; what I'm trying to do here (and  
> this part is much more me than Josh) is make them more uniform such  
> that they can co-exist with machine edits without either stomping on  
> the other.  Right now doing that is difficult, because it's  
> impossible to tell the default comments from the ones the users  
> added and the current comment structure bleeds onto the same lines  
> as the settings.

How about a simple rule, such as that machine-generated comments start  
with "##", while user comments start with just "#"? I think that I've  
seen such a rule used before. At any rate, I think that, unless you  
have some sort of line marker for machine-generated comments, there  
will be no way to tell them apart from user comments.

Other possibilities for machine-comments:

## Machine comment
### Machine comment
#! Machine comment
#@ Machine comment
#$ Machine comment
#^ Machine comment
# Machine comment

I actually kinda like "#!". It's distinctive and unlikely to appear in  
a user comment. Anyway, just food for thought.

Best,

David