Re: psql: Add \dL to show languages

On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Josh Kupershmidt <schmiddy@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 8:52 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:
>>>> I do not like the use of parentheses in the usage description "list
>>>> (procedural) languages". Why not have it simply as "list procedural
>>>> languages"?
>>>
>>> Because it lists non-procedural langauges as well? (I didn't check it,
>>> that's just a guess)
>>
>> There are many places in our code and documentation where "procedural
>> language" or "language" are treated as synonyms.  There's no semantic
>> difference; procedural is simply a noise word.
>
> [bikeshedding]
>
> I agree with Andreas' suggestion that the help string be "list
> procedural languages", even though the \dLS output looks something
> like this:
>
>           List of languages
>  Procedural Language | Owner | Trusted
> ---------------------+-------+---------
>  c                   | josh  | f
>  internal            | josh  | f
>  plpgsql             | josh  | t
>  sql                 | josh  | t
> (4 rows)

By the by, in the output of \df, \dt, \db, etc., that first column is
called simply "Name".

> which, as Magnus points out, includes non-procedural languages (SQL).
>
> I think that "list languages" could be confusing to newcomers -- the
> very people who might be reading through the help output of psql for
> the first time -- who might suppose that "languages" has something to
> do with the character sets supported by PostgreSQL, and might not even
> be aware that a variety of procedural languages can be used inside the
> database.

Fair point.

--
Robert Haas
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