Re: Proposal: new border setting in psql

On Fri, 29 Aug 2008, Tom Lane wrote:

> the patch works for data that contains no backslashes, asterisks, 
> backquotes, vertical bars, nor underscores.

These characters don't show up very much in real world data.  You'll find 
[-.,:;!@#$%&()"] in just about everything; those would be a problem. 
Occasionally I'll see data files that use * in them, that's the main 
source for the ones I was suggesting I'd have to tweak with a 
search/replace (* -> \*) before the output would be useful.  But [\`|_]? 
Unless you're storing source code or similar computer-ish stuff in your 
database, you just don't see those characters.  The kind of regular text a 
normal business dumps into a database just doesn't use them.

> I am quite certain that anyone trying to pass data into a ReST-reading 
> application will soon be dissatisfied with this patch.

If anyone can suggest a common data source that a) makes sense to output 
in tabular form and b) uses one of the special characters that's a problem 
here, I'd grudgingly concede here.  A quick search of the stuff I work on 
finds filenames like "C:\WINDOWS" as the only thing I run into with any 
frequency close to that category, and it's rare I'd be dumping something 
with a filename into tabular output.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD