Re: bytea vs. pg_dump

Bernd Helmle <mailings@oopsware.de> writes:
> --On Montag, August 03, 2009 15:11:08 -0400 Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> 
> wrote:
>> I'm starting to look at this patch.  I observe that it's setting the
>> default output format to HEX.  If changing the default behavior was
>> agreed to, or even discussed, I do not remember where.  Shouldn't the
>> default stay the same?

> I would prefer it to be the default at least for pg_dump,

Well, we could have pg_dump force the output format to hex regardless
of what the default is.

A disadvantage of doing that is there wouldn't be any convenient way
to get pg_dump to *not* set the output format (unless we add a switch,
which seems way overkill).  Which would mean there would be no good way
to get pg_dump to produce backwards-compatible output.  But considering
how many other backwards-incompatible changes we have put into pg_dump
without blinking, I'm not sure this argument outweighs the probability
of breaking a lot of applications.
        regards, tom lane