I'm preparing a patch to make more psql slash commands
tab-completable (\di, \dv etc-) and have come across the following dilemma:
- only relations visible in the current search path should be returned [*]
- to determine visibilty via pg_catalog.pg_table_is_visible(), the relation's OID is necessary;
- using (say) pg_catalog.pg_views to obtain view names seems to be the "cleaner" approach (making psql independent from
thebackend etc.)
- views don't come with OIDs
As is psql currently uses pg_catalog.pg_views to complete view names,
meaning it will happily tab-complete (say) DROP VIEW with a view _not_
in the current search path. If executed the statement naturally
produces the error 'ERROR: view "..." does not exist'.
Q: is there any likelihood of the pg_catalog views (pg_views, pg_tables, pg_indexes, pg_rules, possibly others I have
missed)returning the relevant OID or (probably cleaner) the result of pg_table_is_visible() as a boolean?
Otherwise the only workaround will be to ignore the catalog views and
work with pg_class directly, which I will probably do, but it
feels like a step backwards.
[*] at least, this is how \d currently behaves and IMHO is intuitive. \d should of course operate on schema names
too,to enable completion of relation names not in the search path; tentative patch will follow.
Ian Barwick
barwick@gmx.net