Re: BUG #16726: Invalid input syntax is not a useful error message

Hi,

I find your bug report inappropriately disrespectful - you realize this
is an open source project, and you're not paying us for development?
Not to say that I think your tone would be appropriate in a commercial
setting either.

On 2020-11-18 23:55:44 +0000, PG Bug reporting form wrote:
> I tried to update the uuid-value of a user with a uuid-literal. Since the
> documentation on this is so useless:
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/datatype-uuid.html I had to try and
> finally give up.

The docs say:

"A UUID is written as a sequence of lower-case hexadecimal digits, in
several groups separated by hyphens, specifically a group of 8 digits
followed by three groups of 4 digits followed by a group of 12 digits,
for a total of 32 digits representing the 128 bits. An example of a UUID
in this standard form is:"

What exactly are you lacking in this description?

The docs also give you example UUIDs to try - which you evidently
didn't.

> Example-query i tried:
> update users set
> some_uuid_field = 'dec3d6c4-c32e-45c6-1eae3df44fbf'
> where
> id = 5

That's not a valid uuid, you're missing one group of four digits.

> b) That your error messages FOR ONCE are not useless and tell me the
> expected syntax, you are wasting millions of hours of developer time and
> human life, because you can not be asked to make useful error
> messages.

a) How about being nice to people
b) There's a limit to the amount of detail in error messages we can
provide - e.g. for types / operators that are allowed to be used for
row level security, we can't include anything that'd allow inferring
content from the error message.
c) Please make a proposal.

- Andres