Re: psql: Add setting to make '+' on \d implicit

On Apr 23, 2010, at 11:28 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

> "Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@rice.edu> writes:
>> On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 10:58:40AM -0500, Terry Brown wrote:
>>> So the proposal would be:
>>>
>>> \d+ does as it has always done, no change
>>> \d- (new) always behaves like 'old' \d
>>> \d  acts as 'old' \d or as \d+, depending on the setting of 'verbose_describe', set via \pset.
>
>> Hmm, what about all the other + variants? Would this setting affect
>> them? I'd suggest perhaps it should.
>
> If we were to do something like that, it would certainly have to affect
> every \d variant that has a + option.  Which is probably not a very good
> idea --- in many cases that's a very expensive/verbose option.  I can't
> get excited about this proposal, personally.
>
> What the OP actually seemed to care about was database object comments.
> I could see somebody who relied heavily on comments wanting his comments
> to be included in all display commands, even without the + option.
> Maybe a configuration variable along the lines of 'always_show_comments'
> would be a better design.

Or more generally an ability to set aliases via .psqlrc similar to \set, maybe?

\alias "\d-" = "\d"
\alias "\d" = "\d+"

Cheers, Steve