Re: about help message for new pg_dump's --filter option

> On 2 Dec 2023, at 17:02, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org> wrote:
>
> On 2023-Nov-30, Kyotaro Horiguchi wrote:
>
>> Hello.
>>
>> Recently, a new --filter option was added to pg_dump. I might be
>> wrong, but the syntax of the help message for this feels off. Is the
>> word 'on' not necessary after 'based'?
>>
>>> --filter=FILENAME include or exclude objects and data from dump
>>> based expressions in FILENAME
>
> Isn't this a bit too long?

I was trying to come up with a shorter description but didn't come up with one
that clearly enough described what it does.

> Maybe we can do something shorter, like
>
> --filter=FILENAME determine objects in dump based on FILENAME

I don't think that's an improvement really, it's not obvious what "determine
objects" means. How about a variation along these lines?:

--filter=FILENAME include/exclude objects based on rules in FILENAME

If we want to use less horizontal space we can replace FILENAME with FILE,
though I'd prefer not to since FILENAME is already used in the help output for
--file setting a precedent.

--
Daniel Gustafsson