--On Dienstag, April 01, 2008 11:39:59 -0400 Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
wrote:
> Do we really want such a thing?
Well, i use aliases everytime and everywhere they got implemented and i
found it quite useful to _extend_ existing behavior (integrating additional
functionality in an easy way)
> The space of backslash command names
> is so densely populated already that it's hard to imagine creating
> aliases without conflicting with existing (or future) command names
I often found existing backslash command sometimes overloaded or simply not
providing information i really need (for example, an easy way to get
information about current locales, encoding and user settings). You simply
can't catch all requirements DBA's and users want within a all-catching
implementation. Using this way, users are able to implement their own
command shortcuts
Overriding existing backslash commands (as my first example shows) is only
an implementation-specific detail which could easily forbidden. However,
defining your own shortcuts for your psql-sessions looks quite useful to
me, like my 2nd example tries to illustrate.
> It seems like mostly a recipe for confusion.
So what? This could happen in every shell that supports aliases as well. I
don't get your point...?
--
Thanks
Bernd