psql's \d commands --- end of the line for 1-character identifiers?

[ moved to hackers from pgsql-patches ]

"Christopher Kings-Lynne" <chriskl(at)familyhealth(dot)com(dot)au> writes:
> Peter wrote:
>> Christopher Kings-Lynne writes:
>>> \dc - list conversions [PATTERN]
>>> \dC - list casts
>>
>> What are we going to use for collations?

> \dn Is the only letter left in collations that hasn't been used!

... and that was already proposed for "show schemas" (namespaces).

I'm inclined to think it's time to bite the bullet and go over to
words rather than single characters to identify the \d target
(viz, "\dschema", "\dcast", etc, presumably with unique abbreviations
being allowed, as well as special cases for the historical single
characters).

The issue here is what do we do with the existing "\d[istvS]" behavior
(for instance, "\dsit" means "list sequences, indexes, and tables").
Is that useful enough to try to preserve, or do we just bit-bucket it?
If we do try to preserve it, how should it work?

regards, tom lane