Re: GUC with units, details

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> That seems OK for SHOW, which is mainly intended for human
>> consumption, but what will you do with pg_settings? For programmatic
>> use I think we want more predictable behavior.

> I'd think that a program would not care. Or do you want a units-free
> display that can be parsed as integer?

Yeah. If the value might be shown as either "99kB" or "9MB" then a
program *must* have a pretty complete understanding of the units system
to make sense of it at all. Furthermore this is not backwards
compatible --- it'll break any existing code that inspects pg_settings
values. I suggest that the values column should continue to display
exactly as it does today (ie, the integer value in the var's native
units) and we just add a column saying what the native units are.

> Do we want to introduce a difference between pg_settings and SHOW ALL?

Yup, I think that's the lesser of the evils.

regards, tom lane