Re: Doc patch on psql output formats

"Daniel Verite" <daniel(at)manitou-mail(dot)org> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> Pushed. (I simplified the code a bit by using just one state variable,
>> and also made the error message more verbose.)

> Thanks!

I noticed while poking at the csv patch that we'd outsmarted ourselves
with this one. As of HEAD, it's impossible to select latex output format
at all:

regression=# \pset format latex
\pset: ambiguous abbreviation "latex" matches both "latex" and "latex-longtable"

We could fix that by adding a special case to accept an exact match
immediately. However, that would still leave us in a situation where
"latex" can never be abbreviated at all, which does not seem very nice
(not to mention not being backwards-compatible). Instead I propose
treating "latex-longtable" as a special case, as attached. With this
code, "l", "la", up through "latex" are all accepted as "latex", while
"latex-" through "latex-longtable" are accepted as "latex-longtable".
This has less ideological purity than one could wish, but it's backwards
compatible and arguably a lot more user-friendly than what we'd have
if we insist on an exact match for "latex".

In future, let's reject any proposal to invent switch or option names
such that one is a prefix of another.

regards, tom lane