Re: Parsing config files in a directory

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> Another option would be to introduce a section syntax, something like
> what M$ does.  We could define a line that contains just [foo] to mean
> "define foo as a custom variable class and automatically put all the
> rest of the settings in this section into that namespace".

That seems like a pretty darn bad idea, unless we munge the parser to
terminate the section when exiting a particular include file.  Otherwise
files that don't set custom_variable_class will have surprising
interactions with those that do.  I don't see any particularly great
benefit in allowing people to omit the prefix anyway --- what if you
want to set some custom and some standard variables?  With the above
definition you can't do that.

The fact that custom_variable_classes interacts with other declarations
around it is already an ugly misfeature of the design.  Let us please
not add more such interactions.
        regards, tom lane