Re: \x auto and EXPLAIN

Andreas Karlsson <andreas(at)proxel(dot)se> writes:
> psql's "\x auto" is a nice feature, but it is made much less useful in
> my opinion due to the expanded output format making query plans
> unreadable (and query plans often end up using expanded display due to
> their width). I think we should never use the expanded format for
> EXPLAIN output in the "\x auto" mode, since even when the wrapped format
> is used the query plans are very hard to read.

> I see two ways to fix this.

> 1) Never use expanded display for the case where there is only one
> column. There seems to me like there is little value in using expanded
> display for when you only have one column, but I may be missing some use
> case here.

> 2) Explicitly detect (for example based on the headers) that the result
> is a query plan and if so disable expanded display.

The second of these seems pretty bletcherous --- for one thing, it might
fall foul of localization attempts. However, I could see the argument
for not using expanded mode for any single-column output.

regards, tom lane