Re: Prettification versus dump safety

Tom Lane wrote:
> In testing the TRIGGER WHEN patch, I notice that pg_dump is relying on
> pg_get_triggerdef(triggeroid, true) (ie, "pretty" mode) to dump
> triggers. This means that trigger WHEN conditions will be dumped
> without adequate parenthesization to ensure they are interpreted the
> same way when loaded into future PG versions. That's not acceptable.
>
> The easy ways out of this are
> (1) change pg_dump to not prettify trigger definitions at all, or
> (2) change pg_get_triggerdef from the submitted patch so that it
> doesn't reduce parenthesization even in "pretty" mode.
>
The pretty option was explicitely never intended for pg_dump use.
When pg_dump is used to create a future version proof dump, it shouldn't
use the pretty option, when used to create some schema scripts for
exernal editing it may be enabled. I propose to invent a cmd line option
for that (maybe as "prettified plain text" output format).

Regards,
Andreas