Re: Bug in psql

On Wed, Jan 29, 2025 at 3:56 PM Chris BSomething <xpusostomos(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> In psql 17.2, if I do \? it says...
>
> \dE[S+] [PATTERN] list foreign tables
> \des[+] [PATTERN] list foreign servers
> \det[+] [PATTERN] list foreign tables
>
> notice the duplicate.
>
> If I do \dES+, it is titled "list of relations"... whatever that means.
>

Relations are a super-class of table-things. There are many subtypes of
relations. \d Lists relations of all subtypes. You can also add a single
letter to \d to limit the listing to only the subtype-specific relations.
That is what the E is doing here.

> It seems to be another list of foreign tables but with a different format.
>

Since \d can only show information limited to the super-class relation, and
not specific subtypes, the information for the foreign table subtype needs
to be made available somewhere. That place is \det

I also kind of feel like the name in the help text should always be the
> name you actually get. So for example, \ddS is described in help as "show
> object descriptions not displayed elsewhere" (BTW, why is this one "show"
> and the others are "list"), whereas the output is merely "object
> descriptions".
>

This kind of review of consistency doesn't really get treated like a bug
report in most cases. It makes for a decent technical writing R&D project
for someone interested in putting in the effort.

David J.