Обсуждение: Remove obsolete mention of backslashes as escapes

The documentation in
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-syntax-lexical.html#SQL-SYNTAX-DOLLAR-QUOTING
says that

 "While the standard syntax for specifying string constants is usually convenient,
  it can be difficult to understand when the desired string contains many single
  quotes or backslashes, since each of those must be doubled."

But this has been obsolete ever since version 9.1, when "standard_conforming_strings"
started to default to "on".  It has confused at least one reader:
https://dba.stackexchange.com/q/325850/176905

So I propose to remove the mention of backslashes there.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

Thanks, patch applied back to PG 11.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 09:54:11AM +0200, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> The documentation in
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-syntax-lexical.html#SQL-SYNTAX-DOLLAR-QUOTING
> says that
> 
>  "While the standard syntax for specifying string constants is usually convenient,
>   it can be difficult to understand when the desired string contains many single
>   quotes or backslashes, since each of those must be doubled."
> 
> But this has been obsolete ever since version 9.1, when "standard_conforming_strings"
> started to default to "on".  It has confused at least one reader:
> https://dba.stackexchange.com/q/325850/176905
> 
> So I propose to remove the mention of backslashes there.
> 
> Yours,
> Laurenz Albe

> From 282d2dae27524aef37cdafe02e4833894bf5892c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2023 09:48:20 +0200
> Subject: [PATCH] Remove obsolete mention of backslashes as escapes
> 
> Since version 9.1, standard_conforming_strings defaults to "on".
> So the remark that backslashes must be doubled has been obsolete
> for a long time and should be removed.  It is more confusing than
> helpful by now.
> ---
>  doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml
> index 5668ab0143..3ba844057f 100644
> --- a/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml
> +++ b/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml
> @@ -555,7 +555,7 @@ U&'d!0061t!+000061' UESCAPE '!'
>      <para>
>       While the standard syntax for specifying string constants is usually
>       convenient, it can be difficult to understand when the desired string
> -     contains many single quotes or backslashes, since each of those must
> +     contains many single quotes, since each of those must
>       be doubled. To allow more readable queries in such situations,
>       <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> provides another way, called
>       <quote>dollar quoting</quote>, to write string constants.
> -- 
> 2.39.2
> 


-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  Only you can decide what is important to you.

On Fri, 2023-09-08 at 17:25 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Thanks, patch applied back to PG 11.

Thank you!

Laurenz Albe