If you hit tab on a table name containing a \ you get spammed with a series of
WARNINGS and HINTS about nonstandard use of \\ in a string literal:
postgres=# select * from bar\baz<<TAB>>
WARNING: nonstandard use of \\ in a string literal
LINE 1: ... substring(pg_catalog.quote_ident(c.relname),1,7)='bar\\baz'...
^
HINT: Use the escape string syntax for backslashes, e.g., E'\\'.
WARNING: nonstandard use of \\ in a string literal
LINE 3: ...ing(pg_catalog.quote_ident(n.nspname) || '.',1,7)='bar\\baz'...
^
HINT: Use the escape string syntax for backslashes, e.g., E'\\'.
WARNING: nonstandard use of \\ in a string literal
LINE 3: ...alog.quote_ident(nspname) || '.',1,7) = substring('bar\\baz'...
^
HINT: Use the escape string syntax for backslashes, e.g., E'\\'.
WARNING: nonstandard use of \\ in a string literal
LINE 5: ... || '.' || pg_catalog.quote_ident(c.relname),1,7)='bar\\baz'...
^
HINT: Use the escape string syntax for backslashes, e.g., E'\\'.
WARNING: nonstandard use of \\ in a string literal
LINE 5: ...og.quote_ident(n.nspname) || '.',1,7) = substring('bar\\baz'...
^
HINT: Use the escape string syntax for backslashes, e.g., E'\\'.
WARNING: nonstandard use of \\ in a string literal
LINE 5: ...alog.quote_ident(nspname) || '.',1,7) = substring('bar\\baz'...
^
HINT: Use the escape string syntax for backslashes, e.g., E'\\'.
There are a few options here:
1) Use E'' in all the psql completion queries. This means they won't work on
older versions of postgres (but they don't in general do so anyways). It would
also break anybody who set standard_conforming_string = 'on'. Ideally we would
want to use E'' and then pass false directly to PQEscapeStringInternal but
that's a static function.
2) Use $$%s$$ style quoting. Then we don't need to escape the strings at all.
We would probably have to move all the quoting outside the C strings and
borrow the function from pg_dump to generate the quoting as part of sprintf
parameter substitution.
3) set standards_conforming_strings=on for psql tab-completion queries and
then reset it afterwards. That way we can just use plain standard-conforming
'' and not get any warnings.
4) Replace PQExec with PQExecParam in tab-complete.c
Personally I think (4) is the best long-term option but at this point that
doesn't seem feasible. (3) or (2) seems the next best option.
-- Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com Ask me about EnterpriseDB's On-Demand Production
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