Re: Command-line parsing in pg_ctl is not portable

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> The command-line argument parsing in pg_ctl is not portable. This is the
> output on a glibc system:
>
> $ pg_ctl start stop
> pg_ctl: too many command-line arguments (first is "start")
>
> But:
>
> $ POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 pg_ctl start stop
> pg_ctl: too many command-line arguments (first is "stop")
>
> This is probably because GNU getopt rearranges the arguments, and since pg_ctl
> uses two while loops to try to allow non-option arguments before options,
> things may get reordered multiple times.
>
> Now this particular case is minor trouble, but I wonder in what other
> situations arguments will get reordered where the order does make a
> difference.

Yea, I found that GNU getopt reordering thing to be very strange. I can
imagine some risks to such reordering. Fortunately we don't have any
other commands where we have to do this weird double-calls.

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