Re: magical eref alias names

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Thu, Nov 7, 2024 at 4:07 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> Is there some strong reason to insist on making that core-dump-risking
>> change, rather than simply assigning the now-one-size-fits-all alias
>> when creating Alias nodes?

> What I'm unhappy about is not being able to tell the difference
> between a name that was invented by or at least meaningful to the user
> and one that isn't.

You can already tell that, by looking to see whether
RTE->alias->aliasname exists. eref is meant to be the resolved
name-to-use not the user's original input.

> I would be more sympathetic to the idea of system-generated aliases if
> they were generated in a way that made it likely that they would be
> meaningful to the user. In fact, if they were generated in such a way
> that they would be unique, that would actually be fantastic and I
> would definitely not be arguing for removing them.

The trick there is to keep them predictable, because as I mentioned in
my previous response, there may be people depending on knowing what
name will be assigned. We're working with a ton of history here,
and I'm not really convinced that change will be change for the
better.

regards, tom lane