Re: Proposed patch - psql wraps at window width

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
>> I checked the use of COLUMNS and it seems bash updates the environment
>> variable when a window is resized.  I added ioctl(TIOCGWINSZ) if COLUMNS
>> isn't set.  We already had a call in print.c for detecting the
>> number of rows on the screen to determine if the pager should
>> be used.  Seems COLUMNS should take precedence over ioctl(), right?
>
> Considering that the code to determine the row count is undisputed so far, the
> column count detection should work the same.  That is, we might not need to
> look at COLUMNS at all.  Unless there is a use case for overriding the column
> count (instead of just turning off the wrapping).
>
I asked the folks over at "Experts Exchange" to test the behavior of the
ioctl and $COLUMNS on various platforms.  I'd been told that I would
face huge problems if a console was resized.  But the results were
pretty consistent, and $COLUMNS had no problems with resize:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Open_Source/Q_23243646.html

But appears impossible to override $COLUMNS, on some platforms as the
readline call sets it.
On many platforms $COLUMNS is null until the call to readline.
OSX does not set $COLUMNS at all.

So I think the ioctl should be used to determine the wrap width for
terminals, and some other mechanism used for pipes.

There's no way I'd want wrapping as the default for pipe output.  I was
not bold enough to propose that wrapping be the default behavior for the
terminal.

                         -Bryce