Re: psql's EDITOR behavior on Windows

On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 4:11 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
> I wrote:
> > Pavlo Golub <pavlo(dot)golub(at)cybertec(dot)at> writes:
> >> I cannot find the reason why EDITOR value on Windows is quoted.
>
> > The comment you quoted explains it: apparently people expect
> > paths-with-spaces to work in that value without any manual quoting.
>
> Actually, after digging in the git history and archives, the current
> behavior seems to trace back to a discussion on pgsql-hackers on
> 2004-11-15. The thread linkage in the archives seems rather incomplete,
> but it boiled down to this:
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/9045.1100539151%40sss.pgh.pa.us
>
> ie, the argument that people could handle space-containing paths by
> putting double quotes into the environment variable's value is just wrong.
> Possibly Microsoft fixed that in the fifteen years since, but I'd want to
> see some proof.

Interesting. Thanks. I'll prepare a patch showing the case.

>
> regards, tom lane