Re: machine-readable explain output v4

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Andres Freund<andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
>> Well, the whole explain output format is pretty idiosyncratic, and I
>> had to work pretty hard to beat it into submission.  I think that it
>> would not be totally trivial to do what you're suggesting here because
>> it would require adding code to manage es->indent outside of
>> ExplainPrintPlan(), which we currently don't.  I'm not sure whether
>> that works out to a net win.
> Thats why I suggested doing it for JSON/XML only. E.g. like in the attached
> patch. The result looks simpler for my eyes.

I looked at this some more.  I think it's a mess.  It's probably right
to do what you're suggesting here, but this patch only changes pieces
of it without making the whole thing consistent.  report_triggers(),
for example, kludges a value into es->indent but then ignores it when
determining how much to indent <Trigger>, etc.  I can't even figure
out why this works now, let alone being able to maintain it down the
line.

I'm working on trying to fix this.

...Robert