Re: surppressing column names in COPY format

Robert Treat <xzilla(at)users(dot)sourceforge(dot)net> writes:
> On Thu, 2003-07-31 at 16:50, Tom Lane wrote:
>> None; we just haven't gotten around to removing code that no longer
>> pulls its weight. The no-column-name variant is just as dangerous as
>> it was in the COPY case, IMHO.

> by dangerous you mean functional right?

:-)

By dangerous I mean "might not restore the table correctly". There are
scenarios involving child tables and ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN where a
column-name-less INSERT or COPY will dump the data in a different column
order than pg_dump's CREATE TABLE command will create. Before 7.3 it
was in fact not possible to dump and reload the regression-test database
using COPY, because of this problem --- perhaps that causes me to
overstate its importance, but there is a definite risk.

> would a patch to remove this dead code (the insert without column case)
> be accepted for 7.4?

Not for 7.4, because we're past feature freeze, but I wouldn't object to
removing it in 7.5.

regards, tom lane