RE: StringInfo fixes, v19 edition. Plus a few oddities

On Thursday, April 23, 2026 12:03 AM vignesh C <vignesh21(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Apr 2026 at 06:42, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> >
> > David Rowley <dgrowleyml(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > > append_tuple_value_detail() contains some pretty weird translation
> > > strings. The code currently does:
> >
> > > /* translator: This is the terminator of a conflict message */
> > > appendStringInfoString(buf, _("."));
> >
> > > I'm not a translator, but isn't that going to be pretty hard to know
> > > what to do with, given that the same string could be used for
> > > anything else in the code and need something completely different
> > > done? That same function also contains a _(": ") and _(", ") which
> > > seem equally hard to deal with.
> >
> > Yeah, this seems to me to fly in the face of our style guide's rule
> > about "don't construct messages out of parts". And the reason for the
> > rule is precisely that stuff like this poses insoluble problems for
> > translators.
> >
> > I think it'd be reasonable to make this helper function build a string
> > like
> > (value, value, value)
> > with the punctuation being untranslated on the grounds that this is
> > standard SQL notation. Then that could be plugged into a translatable
> > message that might hopefully represent a full sentence with a %s for
> > the tuple data.
>
> I've updated the code to avoid constructing messages from translated
> fragments. append_tuple_value_detail() now only builds a SQL-style tuple
> string like (v1, v2, v3) without any translation or punctuation.
> All punctuation and sentence construction are moved to the callers, which
> now use a single translatable string with a %s placeholder for the tuple data.
> Attached patch has the changes for the same.

The patch seems to change the message content by adding parentheses around the
tuple detail section[1]. However, IIUC, we only need parentheses around the value,
not around the keyword.

[1]
before: ... row to be deleted: replica identity (a)=(10)
After : ... row to be deleted: (replica identity (a)=(10))

Best Regards,
Hou zj