Re: pg_dump, pg_basebackup don't error out with wrong option for "--format"

On Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 10:44 AM Bharath Rupireddy
<bharath.rupireddyforpostgres@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I noticed that the pg_dump and pg_basebackup are not erroring out when
> "--fo"/"--for"/"--form"/"--forma"/" are specified(use cases 1 - 4, 7 -
> 9) whereas it fails if a pattern that doesn't match with "format" is
> specified (use case 5, 10). This seems to be true only for "--format"
> option, for other options it just errors out (use case 6). Why is the
> behaviour for "--format" isn't consistent?
>
> Is it something expected? Is the option parsing logic here buggy?

I think for parsing we use getopt_long(), as per that if you use the
prefix of the string and that is not conflicting with any other option
then that is allowed.  So --fo, --for all are accepted, --f will not
be accepted because --file and --format will conflict, --foo is also
not allowed because it is not a valid prefix string of any valid
option string.

-- 
Regards,
Dilip Kumar
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com