Re: non-standard escapes in string literals

On Wed, May 08, 2002 at 06:47:46PM +0200, Zeugswetter Andreas SB SD wrote:
> When we are talking about the places where you need double escaping
> (once for parser, once for input function) to make it work, I would also
> say that that is very cumbersome (not broken, since it is thus documented) :-)
> I would also default to strict ANSI, but not depricate the escaping when set.
> All imho of course.

As the original reporter of this issue, I am gratified to hear it
acknowledged by the developers. Thanks! (I also apologize if I
exaggerated the pain caused, as apparently not many other people
have been bitten by this specific problem. Well, it was painful for
me. ;-) )

I must say, though, that I remain bothered by the "not broken"
attitude. There is an obvious standard for PostgreSQL to follow,
yet it is non-compliant in utterly trivial ways, which provide
marginal or no benefits. Granted, changing long-standing defaults
may not be acceptible; but there is a big difference between, "it is
broken but we just can't change it for compatibility reasons", and,
"it is not broken".

It is my experience that most other free software projects take
standards compliance more seriously than PostgreSQL, and my strong
opinion that both the project and its users (not to mention the
whole SQL database industry, eventually) would benefit from better
support for the SQL standard.

Ok, I've said my peace.

Andrew