On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 8:35 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
Tom, * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote: > Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes: > > This particular bike-shedding really doesn't seem to be terribly useful > > or sensible, to me. \gx isn't "consistent" or "descriptive", frankly. > > Why not? To me it reads as "\g with an x option". The "x" refers to > the implied "\x", so it's not an arbitrary choice at all.
That's not how '\dx' works, as I pointed out, so I don't see having the second character being 'x' to imply "\x mode" makes sense.
It makes perfect sense ... it just not something that we've had the option to do before (no, I haven't tried to figure out if we've missed an opportunity or two here).
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without actual consistency across commands which take 'x' as a sub-command I don't see the 'descriptive' argument as holding much weight either
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Arguing that something is mnemonic doesn't require any precedence - though one could wish for better uses of mnemonic naming choices for past and future items.
In scripting uses of psql I could see wanting to use "\gx" and, say "\gn" (i.e., always output in non-expanded mode) instead of ";" so that for any given query I can specify the exact layout I care about and don't have to jump through hoops to toggle \x back and forth.
Limiting consideration of the use-case of this feature to interactive use is, IMHO, a mistake. In the copious use of psql scripting that I do I would find both options I named above to be useful to directly and concisely communicate the display intent of each query I execute.
