Re: FWD: Re: Updated backslash consistency patch

Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> I think people use \df all the time to check the argument list, verify
>> whether they remember the function name correctly, etc. It's not for
>> "learning about" stuff you never heard of, it's for remembering details
>> (as indeed is the usage for user-defined functions too).

> Which means my patch will work perfectly for them (because of the
> pattern), and hopefully for you. ;-)

I can agree that it's reasonable for the default behavior with no
arguments (no pattern) to be to show only user-defined objects.
Otherwise you're going to get quite a long list, which doesn't
seem particularly useful --- and if you really want that, you can
say '*.*' so there's no loss of functionality if we change it.

However, if we don't have that restriction when a pattern is given,
I wonder whether we need the 'S' modifier at all. If you really
want to see only system objects, there's 'pg_catalog.*', but this
doesn't seem like a case that's so common that it needs a command
modifier letter.

So my proposal at the moment is to get rid of 'S', have the behavior
with a pattern be the same as it was before, and only change the
behavior with no pattern.

regards, tom lane