TODO Item: Consider allowing control of upper/lower case folding of unquoted, identifiers

Hi,

As an attempt at a first PostgreSQL patch, I'd like to see if I can do
anything about this issue.

I've read both the attached threads;

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2004-04/msg00818.php
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-10/msg01527.php

There seems no consensus about how to go about this. I have done some
initial changes and found some problems with my attempts. initdb always
creates pg_catalog relations with lowercase names, as does the function
list. eg count() with uppercased identifiers requires "count"(). All
of these can be altered on database copy. It shouldn't be a problem.
However I see shared relations as a big problem. The 2004 thread
suggests that we want a per database setting. I am unable to see how we
share shared relations between databases with different case folder.

pg_user is an example of this;

Lowercase database; CREATE ROLE mrruss LOGIN; results in -> mrruss
as data in pg_user
Uppercase database; CREATE ROLE mrruss LOGIN; resutls in -> MRRUSS as
data in pg_user

Now both of those can be accessed from any database. And you will get a
different user based on the source database.

Overall, I'd like to concentrate on the implementation as I'm a
beginner. But I see this being mainly a problem with nailing down the
actual requirement for the implementation. So I'll try to start the
discussion to allow me or somebody else to eventually develop a patch
for this.

The first question is, are all the requirements of the 2004 thread still
true now?

Setting case folder at initdb time seems the easiest method but I'm not
sure if that's what people want. Any GUC variables seem to play havoc
with the pg_catalog schema and the data in the catalogs.

Ideas and comments?

Thanks

Russell