Re: Counting lines correctly in psql help displays

Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
> On 09/05/2015 12:55 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Or we could just give up and replace the counts by INT_MAX, forcing use
>> of the pager unless you've turned it off. All of those outputs are long
>> enough now that it's hard to believe there are any common screen layouts
>> where you don't end up invoking the pager anyway. (usage() is 60 lines,
>> the others are more.) This is probably the reason why we've seldom
>> noticed they're wrong --- it barely matters anymore.
>>
>> One way or the other I think it's past time to get out of the business
>> of maintaining these counts. I'm willing to do the work of using a
>> PQExpBuffer if people think it's worth the trouble to have an accurate
>> count, but it may not be worth the code space.

> I'm not terribly happy about the INT_MAX idea. Counting lines in a
> PGExpBuffer seems OK. That way we could honor pager_min_lines, I hope.

TBH, I'm not detecting enough concern about this issue to make it worth
doing more than replacing the counts by INT_MAX. Nobody has stepped up
and said "yeah, my terminal window is 100 lines high and I'll be really
annoyed if \? invokes the pager unnecessarily". I plan to just do the
three-line fix and move on.

regards, tom lane