Re: several minor cleanups

nconway(at)klamath(dot)dyndns(dot)org (Neil Conway) writes:
>> Otherwise I'm okay with this, if we don't mind the probability of
>> breaking existing client applications that are looking for ExecAppend:
>> messages.

> I would be skeptical of any client application that tries to
> divine information about the result of an operation by inspecting
> error messages. IMHO, such an approach is hopelessly fragile
> without error codes (or at least a well-defined set of
> possible errors for a given query).

I agree with you that it's fragile --- but so far we have offered
clients no alternative, and it's not looking like we are going to have
an alternative in the near future. Like it or not, there are clients
out there that are looking at error strings, because they have no other
choice. I'm uncomfortable with the thought of breaking them for what's
really just a cosmetic code cleanup.

The ExecAppend family of messages are particularly nasty in this regard
because they include constraint-violation messages that are likely to
come up in normal operation (ie, they're data problems not query problems).
So they are likely candidates for clients to be checking for.

regards, tom lane