Re: Counting lines correctly in psql help displays

On 09/09/2015 10:27 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
>> On 09/05/2015 12:55 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Or we could just give up and replace the counts by INT_MAX, forcing use
>>> of the pager unless you've turned it off.  All of those outputs are long
>>> enough now that it's hard to believe there are any common screen layouts
>>> where you don't end up invoking the pager anyway.  (usage() is 60 lines,
>>> the others are more.)  This is probably the reason why we've seldom
>>> noticed they're wrong --- it barely matters anymore.
>>>
>>> One way or the other I think it's past time to get out of the business
>>> of maintaining these counts.  I'm willing to do the work of using a
>>> PQExpBuffer if people think it's worth the trouble to have an accurate
>>> count, but it may not be worth the code space.
>> I'm not terribly happy about the INT_MAX idea. Counting lines in a
>> PGExpBuffer seems OK. That way we could honor pager_min_lines, I hope.
> TBH, I'm not detecting enough concern about this issue to make it worth
> doing more than replacing the counts by INT_MAX.  Nobody has stepped up
> and said "yeah, my terminal window is 100 lines high and I'll be really
> annoyed if \? invokes the pager unnecessarily".  I plan to just do the
> three-line fix and move on.
>
>             


Do people really use terminals without scrollbars for serious work any 
more? Personally I'm in favor of forcing the pager less, not more. But 
I'm not going to make a fuss, I'm just surprised.

cheers

andrew