Re: Re: proposal - psql: possibility to specify sort for describe commands, when size is printed

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 10:12 AM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> 2017-03-27 13:59 GMT+02:00 Alexander Korotkov <a(dot)korotkov(at)postgrespro(dot)ru>:
>
>> On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 6:06 PM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> 2017-03-10 16:00 GMT+01:00 Alexander Korotkov <a(dot)korotkov(at)postgrespro(dot)ru
>>> >:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 5:16 PM, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> * Peter Eisentraut (peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com) wrote:
>>>>> > On 2/24/17 16:32, Pavel Stehule wrote:
>>>>> > > set EXTENDED_DESCRIBE_SORT size_desc
>>>>> > > \dt+
>>>>> > > \l+
>>>>> > > \di+
>>>>> > >
>>>>> > > Possible variants: schema_table, table_schema, size_desc,
>>>>> size_asc
>>>>> >
>>>>> > I can see this being useful, but I think it needs to be organized a
>>>>> > little better.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Sort key and sort direction should be separate settings.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > I'm not sure why we need to have separate settings to sort by schema
>>>>> > name and table name. But if we do, then we should support that for
>>>>> all
>>>>> > object types. I think maybe that's something we shouldn't get into
>>>>> > right now.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > So I would have one setting for sort key = {name|size} and on for
>>>>> sort
>>>>> > direction = {asc|desc}.
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps I'm trying to be overly cute here, but why not let the user
>>>>> simply provide a bit of SQL to be put at the end of the query?
>>>>>
>>>>> That is, something like:
>>>>>
>>>>> \pset EXTENDED_DESCRIBE_ORDER_LIMIT 'ORDER BY 5 DESC LIMIT 10'
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think that's the question of usability. After all, one can manually
>>>> type corresponding SQL instead of \d* commands. However, it's quite
>>>> cumbersome to do this every time.
>>>> I found quite useful to being able to switch between different sortings
>>>> quickly. For instance, after seeing tables sorted by name, user can
>>>> require them sorted by size descending, then sorted by size ascending,
>>>> etc...
>>>> Therefore, I find user-defined SQL clause to be cumbersome. Even psql
>>>> variable itself seems to be cumbersome for me.
>>>> I would propose to add sorting as second optional argument to \d*
>>>> commands. Any thoughts?
>>>>
>>>
>>> This proposal was here already - maybe two years ago. The psql command
>>> parser doesn't allow any complex syntax - more - the more parameters in one
>>> psql commands is hard to remember, hard to read.
>>>
>>
>> Could you please provide a link to this discussion. Probably working
>> with multiple parameters in psql commands require some rework, but that's
>> definitely doable.
>>
>
> http://grokbase.com/t/postgresql/pgsql-hackers/
> 137nt5p6s0/proposal-psql-show-longest-tables/oldest
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/AANLkTikyaeJ0XdKDzxSvqPE8kaRRT
> iUQJQHwNJ8ecN2W(at)mail(dot)gmail(dot)com
>

I took a look to these threads, but I didn't find place where difficulties
of adding extra arguments to psql commands are pointed.
Could you, please, point particular messages about it?

------
Alexander Korotkov
Postgres Professional: http://www.postgrespro.com
The Russian Postgres Company