Re: Escape CR/LF in invalid database, role, and tablespace name errors

Hello,

At Thu, 2 Jul 2026 12:16:34 +0800, Chao Li <li(dot)evan(dot)chao(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote in
> While testing “[b380a56a3] Disallow CR and LF in database, role, and
> tablespace names”, I saw that CR/LF are properly rejected. However,
> the raw problematic names are printed directly in the error message,
> which can also reach the server log. This causes LF to split the
> error message and CR to overwrite/hide the beginning of the message,
> which seems not good.

This does not seem specific to this change. PostgreSQL log entries can
already contain embedded newlines, most notably in logged query text.

For example, if I enter the following in psql:

=# select 'abcdef
ghijk' 1;

the server log contains:

ERROR: syntax error at or near "1" at character 23
STATEMENT: select 'abcdef
ghijk' 1;

> And server log looks like:
> ```
> 2026-07-02 10:57:51.518 CST [96799] ERROR: role name "a
> b" contains a newline or carriage return character
> ```
...
> As shown above, printing the raw name in the error message can make
> the log entry confusing: LF splits the error message across multiple
> lines, while CR can overwrite the beginning of the line and lose
> information.

Also, as far as I can see, PostgreSQL has long printed user-supplied
strings in error messages without escaping control characters in many
places. While this is not exactly the same issue, we still allow table
names containing ASCII control characters other than CR and LF.

In short, this seems consistent with PostgreSQL's current design.

Regards,

--
Kyotaro Horiguchi
NTT Open Source Software Center