Units in postgresql.conf

One frequent source of confusion are the different units that the parameters
in postgresql.conf use. shared_buffers is in 8 kB, work_mem is in 1 kB;
bgwriter_delay is in milliseconds, checkpoint_warning is in seconds.
Obviously, we can't change that without inconveniencing a lot of users.

I think it would be useful to allow units to be added to these settings, for
example

shared_buffers = 1000kB
checkpoint_warning = 30s

This would also allow

shared_buffers = 512MB

which is a bit cumbersome to calculate right now (you'd need = 65536).

I haven't thought yet how to parse or implement this, but would people find
this useful?

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/