Re: pg_dump --no-comments confusion

> On 4 Nov 2024, at 17:24, Erik Wienhold <ewie(at)ewie(dot)name> wrote:
>
> On 2024-11-04 16:13 +0100, Matthias van de Meent wrote:
>> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 at 15:41, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
>>>
>>> Someone emailed me privately saying they were confused because they
>>> thought pg_dump --no-comments would remove SQL comments, not the SQL
>>> COMMENT commands. Is this something worth clarifying in our docs? I am
>>> not even sure how I would express it. It currently says:
>>>
>>> --no-comments
>>> Do not dump comments.
>>>
>>> We could change it to:
>>>
>>> --no-comments
>>> Do not dump SQL COMMENT commands
>>
>> I think that'd be more confusing, as SQL comments are /* */. There is
>> no SQL standard-prescribed COMMENT command (if our current docs are to
>> be believed, I don't have a recent version of ISO 9075 to verify that
>> claim).
>
> I think Bruce's suggestion is pretty clear that it does not mean line or
> block comments, but rather the COMMENT command.

I think so too, I think it would be a good change.

> But I also think that
> "SQL" in front of the command name is unnecessary because the man page
> uses the "FOOBAR command" form throughout

Agreed.

> --inserts
> Dump data as INSERT commands [...]
>
> Also, it doesn't really matter whether COMMENT is standard SQL.

AFAIK some flavor of COMMENT is present in MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle which
already makes it more "standardized" than many parts of the SQL standard =)

--
Daniel Gustafsson