Re: pg_dump --pretty-print-views

David Fetter <david@fetter.org> writes:
> On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 11:21:13AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>> -1.  The reason that pg_dump does not pretty-print things is that
>> it's unsafe; there is no real guarantee that the view will reload as
>> intended, because it's under-parenthesized.  (Even if we were sure
>> it would reload safely into current code, which I'm not, what of
>> future versions that could have different operator precedences?)

> Under what circumstances do pretty-printed views not reload?  It seems
> to me that such circumstances would be pretty_print() bugs by
> definition.

It would not be a bug, particularly not in the case of a subsequent
release with different operator precedence.  pg_dump's charter is to be
safe.  Pretty-printing's charter is to look nice.  These goals are not
compatible.  If they were, we'd never have made a separate pretty
printing mode at all.

Now, we could consider changing the "safe" mode so that it tries to
provide nice whitespace/line breaks while not risking removal of
parentheses.  But that would be a totally different patch, and I'm
not sure how much it would address Marko's desires anyway.
        regards, tom lane