Re: COPY options

Kevin Grittner <kgrittn(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> It's not really a question of whether we should go back to
> documenting the deprecated syntax, but whether (and when) support
> for it should finally be ripped out. It was last documented in 8.4.

We still document, and support, not only the pre-9.0 COPY syntax but
also the pre-7.3 COPY syntax; see the bottom of the COPY reference page.
The timescale for getting rid of that kind of thing is *really* long,
in part for fear of breaking old pg_dump backups.

BTW, so far as FORCE NULL goes, I think that feature was implemented
earlier in the 9.0 cycle than where we put in the new generalized
option syntax. When we did the latter, we reverted the documentation
of the old syntax to exactly match 8.4, but did not take out the
gram.y production allowing the never-released FORCE NULL syntax.
I do not recall if that was intentional or an oversight.
We could (a) document it, (b) remove it, or (c) leave it alone.
At this point I favor the benign neglect approach.

regards, tom lane