Re: whats the deal with -u ?

Robert Treat wrote:
> rob(at)ridley:~$ ~rob/devel/postgresql/83/bin/psql -h localhost -u rob -p 5483]
> psql: Warning: The -u option is deprecated. Use -U.
> User name: rob
> Password for user :
> Welcome to psql 8.3beta2, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.
>
> 1) I don't recall why -u was ever deprecated (and honestly postgresql is the
> only program I know which uses -U rather than -u) but maybe we should revert
> to -u and deprecate -U instread?
>
> 2) in any case, if you use -u for some reason it messes up the "Password for
> user " line. In my terminal it gives me a square which doesnt show up in my
> email, but in any case is there some reason it can't print out the proper
> user name (maybe some encoding issue?)
>
> 3) as far back as I can remember, -u has been deprecated, so if we dont want
> to revert to it (see 1) maybe it should just be removed entirely?

As I recall -u actually used a different mechanism to authenticate
versus -U. In fact I think it was a security hole that changed it but it
was a LONG time ago.

I would agree that one or the other needs to be removed. Unfortunately
-U has been the way it is for several releases now so I can't see us
going back to -u regardless of how logical it may be.

Joshua D. Drake