Re: Unicode string literals versus the world

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> Maybe I've just got my head deeply in the sand, but I don't understand
> what the alternative to E'' supposedly is. How am I supposed to write
> the equivalent of E'\t\n\f' without using E''? The
> standard_conforming_strings syntax apparently supports no escapes of
> any kind, which seems so hideously inconvenient that I can't even
> imagine why someone wants that behavior.

Well, quite aside from issues of compatibility with standards and other
databases, I'm sure there are lots of Windows users who are more
interested in being able to store a Windows pathname without doubling
their backslashes than they are in being able to type readable names
for ASCII control characters. After all, in most cases you can get
those characters into a string just by typing them (especially if you
aren't using readline or something like it).

BTW, does anyone know whether Unicode includes the ASCII control
characters ... ie, is \u0009 a name for tab? If so, maybe this
syntax is in part an attempt to cover that use-case in the standard.

regards, tom lane