Re: Identifier case folding notes

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> I have had some idle thoughts on the issue of identifier case folding.
> ...
> Comments?

IMHO, practically the only solid argument for changing from the way
we do things now is "to meet the letter of the spec". The various sorts
of gamesmanship you list would most definitely not meet the letter of
the spec; between that and the inevitability of breaking some apps,
I'm inclined to reject them all on sight.

What I think would perhaps be worth investigating is a compile-time
(or at latest initdb-time) option that flips the case folding behavior
to SQL-spec-compliant and also changes all the built-in catalog entries
to upper case. We would then have a solution we could offer to people
who really need to run apps that depend on SQL-spec case folding ...
and if the upper case hurts their eyes, or breaks some other apps that
they wish they could run in the same DB, well it's their problem.

Of course there would be large amounts of work to try to make psql,
pg_dump, etc behave as nicely as possible with either case-folding rule,
but it doesn't strike me as being so obviously "unworkable" as to be
dismissed at once.

regards, tom lane