Re: psql \d option list overloaded

Dennis Björklund wrote:
> > What is wrong with
> >
> > SELECT * FROM information_schema.tables;
>
> The result is very hard to read since it's so much of it (try column
> instead of tables). The \xx commands do some nice formatting you
> don't get from the above.

This is an interesting point to remember for those that are advocating
pushing psql's queries into the backend. psql's queries are optimized
for monospaced text screens of limited size. Unless someone else is
writing a command-line client, there would be little reuse effect,
because any given application will have different display requirements.

(Another problem with pushing psql's queries into the backend is that
much of the output that psql makes is not a single table. Sometimes
there is more than one table, or the information is in the table
footers. It'd be quite complicated to make the backend produce those
kinds of displays.)