Re: DOC: fixes multiple errors in alter table doc - Mailing list pgsql-hackers
| From | Chao Li |
|---|---|
| Subject | Re: DOC: fixes multiple errors in alter table doc |
| Date | |
| Msg-id | CAEoWx2kkh5kCZwYOYaOVShjh3un2mJTGrcFZyhJXd320PHYfJw@mail.gmail.com Whole thread Raw |
| In response to | Re: DOC: fixes multiple errors in alter table doc (Robert Treat <rob@xzilla.net>) |
| Responses |
Re: DOC: fixes multiple errors in alter table doc
|
| List | pgsql-hackers |
On Jan 2, 2026, at 10:54, Robert Treat <rob@xzilla.net> wrote:
Hi Robert,
Thanks you very much for your review.
On Thu, Dec 18, 2025 at 2:22 AM Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Hacker,
While working on a patch these days, my eyes are on the “alter table” doc, and found multiple errors:
1. Several sub-commands are missed in the top “action” list:
* ALTER COLUMN SET <sequence-option>
* ALTER COLUMN RESTART
I believe these are covered by the line above them:
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name { SET GENERATED { ALWAYS | BY DEFAULT
} | SET sequence_option | RESTART [ [ WITH ] restart ] } [...]* RENAME
This is covered by the 4th line
ALTER TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] name
RENAME TO new_name* SET SCHEMA
5th option...
ALTER TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] name
SET SCHEMA new_schema* ATTACH PARTITION
* DETACH PARTITION
* MERGE PARTITION
* SPLIT PARTITION
And the above are the 7,8,9,10th options at the top.
That’s true. I reverted all above changes.
2. In sub-command details section, "ADD COLUMN [ IF NOT EXISTS ]” missed “[]" with “COLUMN”, which is misleading, because “COLUMN” is actually optional.
Seems technically correct and potentially useful, and I see you
handled this for the DROP COLUMN variant as well, so I could see a +1
on this one.
Thanks for confirming.
3. For all “alter column” sub-commands, "ALTER [ COLUMN ]” are omitted, which is also confusing, because none of other sub-commands omit their prefix part.
Hmm... I'm curious what you find confusing about this. Is the
confusion in trying to find or understand the information presented,
or confusing as to why it isn't all documented the same way? The
downside of your "fix" is that this introduces a lot of extra text
that is more or less noise, especially for folks trying to skim the
documents looking for very specific command references. And while I
agree that we aren't 100% consistent on this within the ALTER TABLE
subcommands, we use this same mixed pattern of omission on other pages
(see ALTER TYPE for instance). If we were to insist on making this
consistent here, I think we'd probably need to look at other pages as
well and evaluate or update them too. I'm not sure that would be an
improvement though.
The confusion came from my own first-time reading of the documentation. Since the page is quite long, when I was reading the action descriptions and wanted to confirm the exact sub-command syntax, I often had to scroll back up to the syntax section. That led me to think it might be helpful to include the full sub-command form directly with the action descriptions.
That said, I understand your concern. The change did make the text longer and added noise. In v2, I’ve therefore reverted that broader change. As you pointed out, if we were to pursue this kind of consistency, it would need to be handled across other similar pages as well, which would be better done as a dedicated and more carefully scoped patch.
Best regards,
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