Re: [PATCH] Add --syntax to postgres for SQL syntax checking

Tom Lane:
> The thing that was bothering me most about this is that I don't
> understand why that's a useful check. If I meant to type
>
> UPDATE mytab SET mycol = 42;
>
> and instead I type
>
> UPDATEE mytab SET mycol = 42;
>
> your proposed feature would catch that; great. But if I type
>
> UPDATE mytabb SET mycol = 42;
>
> it won't. How does that make sense? I'm not entirely sure where
> to draw the line about what a "syntax check" should catch, but this
> seems a bit south of what I'd want in a syntax-checking editor.
>
> BTW, if you do feel that a pure grammar check is worthwhile, you
> should look at the ecpg preprocessor, which does more or less that
> with the SQL portions of its input. ecpg could be a better model
> to follow because it doesn't bring all the dependencies of the server
> and so is much more likely to appear in a client-side installation.
> It's kind of an ugly, unmaintained mess at the moment, sadly.

Would working with ecpg allow to get back a parse tree of the query to
do stuff with that?

This is really what is missing for the ecosystem. A libpqparser for
tools to use: Formatters, linters, query rewriters, simple syntax
checkers... they are all missing access to postgres' own parser.

Best,

Wolfgang