Re: about EDITOR_LINENUMBER_SWITCH

Excerpts from Tom Lane's message of mié may 25 16:07:55 -0400 2011:
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> > Excerpts from Tom Lane's message of mar may 24 17:11:17 -0400 2011:
> >> Right. It would also increase the cognitive load on the user to have
> >> to remember the command-line go-to-line-number switch for his editor.
> >> So I don't particularly want to redesign this feature. However, I can
> >> see the possible value of letting EDITOR_LINENUMBER_SWITCH be set from
> >> the same place that you set EDITOR, which would suggest that we allow
> >> the value to come from an environment variable. I'm not sure whether
> >> there is merit in allowing both that source and ~/.psqlrc, though
> >> possibly for Windows users it might be easier if ~/.psqlrc worked.
>
> > If we're going to increase the number of options in .psqlrc that do not
> > work with older psql versions, can I please have .psqlrc-MAJORVERSION or
> > some such? Having 8.3's psql complain all the time because it doesn't
> > understand "linestyle" is annoying.
>
> 1. I thought we already did have that.

Oh, true, we have that, though it's not very usable because you have to
rename the file from .psqlrc-9.0.3 to .psqlrc-9.0.4 when you upgrade,
which is kinda silly.

> 2. In any case, EDITOR_LINENUMBER_SWITCH isn't a hazard for this,
> because older versions will just think it's a variable without any
> special meaning.

Good point.

> But the real question here is whether we want to change it to be also
> (or instead?) an environment variable.

I vote yes.

--
Álvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
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