Re: BUG #12725: psql: no interpretation of option -F

David G Johnston <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> Any solution would need to continue treating existing syntax the same - so
> adding flags to enable the existing behavior is not really viable.

Yeah, that's not gonna fly.

> How about allowing passing in the SQL "escape me" literal:
> -F E'\t'

Meh. That's still going to amount to an incompatible change, because
that's valid syntax now, even if you think it's a case people are unlikely
to be using. Also, as written the quotes would get stripped by the shell,
making it even less clearly distinguishable from other cases.

This whole business of trying to devise syntax that both follows typical
SQL escape behavior and plays nicely with shell quoting behavior is a
mess. As I mentioned, we gave up on it years ago with regards to
identifier case folding (but not for lack of having tried). I'm not
really eager to spend effort on it for this case, especially not when
there are multiple alternative solutions available already.

regards, tom lane