Re: psql - add SHOW_ALL_RESULTS option

Hello Tom,

>> This is one of the patches already marked as RFC (since September by
>> Alvaro). Anyone interested in actually pushing it, so that it does not
>> fall through to yet another commitfest?
>
> TBH, I think we'd be better off to reject it. This makes a nontrivial
> change in a very long-standing psql behavior, with AFAICS no way to
> get back the old semantics. (The thread title is completely misleading
> about that; there's no "option" in the patch as it stands.)

The thread title was not misleading, the initial version of the patch did
offer an option. Then I was said "the current behavior is stupid (which I
agree), let us change it to the sane behavior without option", then I'm
told the contrary. Sigh.

I still have the patch with the option, though.

> Sure, in a green field this behavior would likely be more sensible ...
> but that has to be weighed against the fact that it's behaved the way it
> does for a long time, and any existing scripts that are affected by that
> behavior have presumably deliberately chosen to use it.

I cannot imagine many people actually relying on the current insane
behavior.

> I can't imagine that changing this will make very many people happier.
> It seems much more likely that people who are affected will be unhappy.
>
> The compatibility issue could be resolved by putting in the option
> that I suppose was there at the beginning.

Indeed.

> But then we'd have to have a debate about which behavior would be
> default,

The patch was keeping current behavior as the default because people do
not like a change whatever.

> and there would still be the question of who would find this to
> be an improvement. If you're chaining together commands with \; then
> it's likely that you are happy with the way it behaves today.
> Certainly there's been no drumbeat of bug reports about it.

Why would there be bug report if this is a feature? :-)

The behavior has been irritating me for a long time. It is plain stupid to
be able to send queries but not see their results.

--
Fabien.