Re: POLA violation with \c service=

On 12/17/2014 10:03 AM, Albe Laurenz wrote:
> David Fetter wrote:
>> I've noticed that psql's  \c function handles service= requests in a
>> way that I can only characterize as broken.
>>
>> This came up in the context of connecting to a cloud hosting service
>> named after warriors or a river or something, whose default hostnames
>> are long, confusing, and easy to typo, so I suspect that service= may
>> come up more often going forward than it has until now.
>>
>> For example, when I try to use
>>
>> \c "service=foo"
>>
>> It will correctly figure out which database I'm trying to connect to,
>> but fail to notice that it's on a different host, port, etc., and
>> hence fail to connect with a somewhat unhelpful error message.
>>
>> I can think of a few approaches for fixing this:
>>
>> 0.  Leave it broken.
>> 1.  Disable "service=" requests entirely in \c context, and error out if attempted.
>> 2.  Ensure that \c actually uses all of the available information.
>>
>> Is there another one I missed?
>>
>> If not, which of the approaches seems reasonable?
>
> #2 is the correct solution, #1 a band aid.

It would be handy, if \c "service=foo" actually worked. We should do #3. 
If the database name is actually a connection string, or a service 
specification, it should not re-use the hostname and port from previous 
connection, but use the values from the connection string or service file.

- Heikki