Re: Backslash handling in strings

Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> writes:
> The only thing I'm not clear on is what exactly is the use case for E''
> strings. That is, who do you expect to actually use them?

The case that convinced me we need to keep some sort of backslash
capability is this: suppose you want to put a string including a tab
into your database. Try to do it with psql:
t=> insert into foo values ('<TAB>
Guess what: you won't get anywhere, at least not unless you disable
readline. So it's nice to be able to use \t.

There are related issues involving \r and \n depending on your platform.
And this doesn't even scratch the surface of encoding-related funnies.

So there's definitely a use-case for keeping the existing backslash
behavior, and E'string' seems like a reasonable proposal for doing that
without conflicting with the SQL spec.

What I do not see at the moment is how we get there from here (ie,
dropping backslashing in regular literals) without incurring tremendous
pain --- including breaking all existing pg_dump files, introducing
security holes and/or data corruption into many existing apps that are
not presently broken, and probably some other ways of ruining your day.
I'm quite unconvinced that this particular letter of the SQL spec is
worth complying with ...

regards, tom lane