Re: Allow COPY to use parameters

On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 11:36 AM, Corey Huinker <corey(dot)huinker(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>> For the following pretend that "STRING" has the same behavior as the
>> "format(...)" function.
>>
>> EXECUTE STRING('COPY %I TO %L', 'testtable', 'testfile.txt');
>
> +1

-1

Why use syntax to do this? If we need a function with special
behaviors, let's make a function with special behaviors, hopefully not
called 'string()'...for example, format_safe(). Furthermore, we
already have functions to deal with safe string injection,
quote_ident/literal, and I'm not sure it's a good divert users away
from using those functions.

Either way, I don't think we should mix improvements to EXECUTE with
this patch, which I think addresses the problems I have with COPY
nicely (at least as it pertains to my pain points)...so +1 to Andrew's
proposal. I would rarely have to use dynamic SQL for COPY with that
in place. Other utility commands (off the top of my head) tend not to
be a problem for me (NOTIFY would be, but pg_notify handles that
case).

merlin