Bug in pg_dump --filter? - Invalid object types can be misinterpreted as valid

From: Fujii Masao <masao(dot)fujii(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Bug in pg_dump --filter? - Invalid object types can be misinterpreted as valid
Date: 2025-08-02 09:47:42
Message-ID: CAHGQGwFzPKUwiV5C-NLBqz1oK1+z9K8cgrF+LcxFem-p3_Ftug@mail.gmail.com
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Hi,

It looks like pg_dump --filter can mistakenly treat invalid object types
in the filter file as valid ones. For example, the invalid type "table-data"
(probably a typo for "table_data") is incorrectly recognized as "table",
and pg_dump runs without error when it should fail.

--------------------------------------------
$ cat filter.txt
exclude table-data one

$ pg_dump --filter filter.txt
--
-- PostgreSQL database dump
--
...

$ echo $?
0
--------------------------------------------

This happens because pg_dump (filter_get_keyword() in pg_dump/filter.c)
identifies tokens as sequences of ASCII alphabetic characters, treating
non-alphabetic characters (like hyphens) as token boundaries. As a result,
"table-data" is parsed as "table".

To fix this, I've attached the patch that updates pg_dump --filter so that
it treats tokens as strings of non-space characters separated by spaces
or line endings, ensuring invalid types like "table-data" are correctly
rejected. Thought?

With the patch:
--------------------------------------------
$ cat filter.txt
exclude table-data one

$ pg_dump --filter filter.txt
pg_dump: error: invalid format in filter read from file "filter.txt"
on line 1: unsupported filter object type: "table-data"
--------------------------------------------

Regards,

--
Fujii Masao

Attachment Content-Type Size
v1-0001-pg_dump-Fix-incorrect-parsing-of-object-types-in-.patch application/octet-stream 4.9 KB

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