Re: pgsql: Give a better error for duplicate entries in VACUUM/ANALYZE colu

"David G. Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 1:50 PM, Peter Eisentraut <
> peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
>> On 9/25/17 15:09, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Hm, reads fine to me, and I'd still rather include "is" in the
>>> revised wording. Anybody else agree with Peter's wording?

>> Note a big deal. I'm just working off existing error messages:

> ​About half of those, especially the "appears" ones, seem unhelpful for
> deciding whether to add "is" here; "is appears" just doesn't work.

Peter's evidence is pretty conclusive that using "is" is not consistent
with our message style precedents, but there's still room to choose
which precedent to follow ;-).

> The middle ground would be writing: column "i" of relation "vaccluster"
> appears more than once; I'm good with using appears instead of deciding
> between [is] specified.

Yeah, I like "appears more than once" too. It does not leave one feeling
that "is" has been left out. Also, "specified" seems like an
unnecessarily formal word here. Per Mark Twain, "Don't use a five-dollar
word when a fifty-cent word will do."

I'll make this change in the back-patched patch, but Peter's list suggests
that it'd be worth trying to make a lot of these other usages more
consistent in HEAD.

regards, tom lane