Re: [PATCH] COPY vs \copy HINT

Craig Ringer <craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> Tom, any preference here?
> I'm probably inclined to go for your original wording and accept that
> it's just too hard to hint at the client/server process split in a
> single short message.

I think my original wording is pretty hopeless for the single-machine
case: "COPY copies to a file on the PostgreSQL server, not on the client".
If the server and client are the same machine, that's content-free.

Christoph's idea isn't bad. We could tweak it to:

COPY TO instructs the PostgreSQL server process to write a file.

COPY FROM instructs the PostgreSQL server process to read a file.

This seems to cover both the wrong-machine and wrong-process-identity
cases, and as a bonus it might help if you've had a brain fade about
which COPY direction is write vs. read.

(I think we're all in agreement that the second sentence of the hint
is fine, so leaving that out of it.)

Comments?

regards, tom lane