Re: [PATCH] Cleanup of GUC units code

On Thu, 2008-09-04 at 09:29 -0400, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 01:26:44AM +0300, Hannu Krosing wrote:
>
> > So Andrews opinion was that Mb (meaning Mbit) is different from MB (for
> > megabyte) and that if someone thinks that we define shared buffers in
> > megabits can get confused and order wrong kind of network card ?
>
> I know it's fun to point and laugh instead of giving an argument, but
> the above is not what I said. What I said is that there is a
> technical difference between at least some of these units, and one
> that is relevant in some contexts where we have good reason to believe
> Postgres is used. So it seems to me that there is at least a _prima
> facie_ reason in favour of making case-based decisions. Your argument
> against that appears to be, "Well, people can be sloppy."
>
> Alvaro's suggestion seems to me to be a better one.

Agreed. maybe this can even be implemented as a special switch to
postmaster (maybe -n or --dry-run, similar to make), not a separate
command.

> > I can understand Alvaros stance more readily - if we have irrational
> > constraints on what can go into conf file, and people wont listen to
> > reason
>
> Extending your current reasoning, it's irrational that all the names
> of the parameters have to be spelled correctly.

It would be irrational to allow all letters in parameter names to be
case-insensitive, except 'k' which has to be lowercase ;)

The main point of confusion comes from not accepting KB and this bites
you when you go down from MB, with reasoning like "ok, it seems that
units are in uppercase, so let's change 1MB to 768KB and see what
happens"

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Hannu