Re: psql: Add \dL to show languages

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 05:22, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Josh Kupershmidt <schmiddy(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 8:52 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>> On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> wrote:
>>>>> I do not like the use of parentheses in the usage description "list
>>>>> (procedural) languages". Why not have it simply as "list procedural
>>>>> languages"?
>>>>
>>>> Because it lists non-procedural langauges as well? (I didn't check it,
>>>> that's just a guess)
>>>
>>> There are many places in our code and documentation where "procedural
>>> language" or "language" are treated as synonyms.  There's no semantic
>>> difference; procedural is simply a noise word.
>>
>> [bikeshedding]
>>
>> I agree with Andreas' suggestion that the help string be "list
>> procedural languages", even though the \dLS output looks something
>> like this:
>>
>>           List of languages
>>  Procedural Language | Owner | Trusted
>> ---------------------+-------+---------
>>  c                   | josh  | f
>>  internal            | josh  | f
>>  plpgsql             | josh  | t
>>  sql                 | josh  | t
>> (4 rows)
>
> By the by, in the output of \df, \dt, \db, etc., that first column is
> called simply "Name".

+1 for just using "name"

>> which, as Magnus points out, includes non-procedural languages (SQL).
>>
>> I think that "list languages" could be confusing to newcomers -- the
>> very people who might be reading through the help output of psql for
>> the first time -- who might suppose that "languages" has something to
>> do with the character sets supported by PostgreSQL, and might not even
>> be aware that a variety of procedural languages can be used inside the
>> database.
>
> Fair point.

Yeah. Procedural langauges may strictly be wrong, but people aren't
likely to misunderstand it.

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/