Re: \x auto and EXPLAIN

On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 6:43 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Andreas Karlsson <andreas(at)proxel(dot)se> writes:
> > psql's "\x auto" is a nice feature, but it is made much less useful in
> > my opinion due to the expanded output format making query plans
> > unreadable (and query plans often end up using expanded display due to
> > their width). I think we should never use the expanded format for
> > EXPLAIN output in the "\x auto" mode, since even when the wrapped format
> > is used the query plans are very hard to read.
>
> > I see two ways to fix this.
>
> > 1) Never use expanded display for the case where there is only one
> > column. There seems to me like there is little value in using expanded
> > display for when you only have one column, but I may be missing some use
> > case here.
>
> > 2) Explicitly detect (for example based on the headers) that the result
> > is a query plan and if so disable expanded display.
>
> The second of these seems pretty bletcherous --- for one thing, it might
> fall foul of localization attempts. However, I could see the argument
> for not using expanded mode for any single-column output.
>

+1 to option #1, I sympathize to this as an annoyance that can be easily
fixed.

--
Alex