Re: review: psql: edit function, show function commands patch

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> What exactly is the point of the \sf command?

> I rather like \sf, actually; in fact, I think there's a decent
> argument to be made that it's more useful than the line-numbering
> stuff for \ef. I don't particularly like the name "\sf", but that's
> more because I think backslash commands are a fundamentally unscalable
> approach to providing administrative functionality than because I
> think there's a better option in this particular case. It's rather
> hard right now to get a function definition out of the database in
> easily cut-and-pastable format.

Um, but \sf *doesn't* give you anything that's usefully copy and
pasteable. And if that were the goal, why doesn't it have an option to
write to a file?

But it's really the line numbers shoved in front that I'm on about here.
I can't see *any* use for that behavior except to figure out what part of
your function an error message with line number is referring to; and as
I said upthread, there are better ways to be attacking that problem.
If you've got a thousand-line function (yes, they're out there) do you
really want to be scrolling through \sf output to find out what line 714
is?

regards, tom lane