Re: Remove name as valid parameter for catalog functions

Thom Brown <thom(at)linux(dot)com> writes:
> On 7 March 2011 20:49, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> The reason those are phrased as "OID or name" is that what they take is
>> regclass, which means that things like pg_total_relation_size('table_name')
>> do in fact work. I think the proposed wording would leave people with
>> the idea that they had to supply a numeric OID, which is a PITA and not
>> by any means the expected usage. I agree that maybe the original
>> wording could use some improvement, but I don't think that just removing
>> "or name" is an improvement.

> That's fair enough, but it still needs changing, as whilst an OID
> won't cause an error, a field with the type of name will. Is it
> reasonable to refer to a parameter as required to be of type regclass?

Well, the table entries for those functions already show that the
parameter is of type regclass. I think the purpose of the text
descriptions is to help out people who might not immediately get the
implications of that.

Maybe we could say "the name or OID of a table", or some such phrase,
so as to subtly avoid the expectation that what is being referred to
is the datatype named "name"?

regards, tom lane