Hello to everybody,

if you have table names with uppercase letters you will not be able to use the patterns in pg_dump.
In particular the processSQLNamePattern function, inside src/fe_utils/strings_utils.c, is converting to lowercase when the text is not double quoted, but when it is double quoted, all the |*+?()[]{}.^$\ characters are quoted.
This means, i.e., that if your tables are called  "tDocuments" and "tDocumentsFiles" if you call

    pg_dump --dbname=healthorganizer --username=hor --table=tDocument*

processSQLNamePattern will output

    c.relname ~ '^(tdocument*)$'

and if you use the double quote

    pg_dump --dbname=healthorganizer --username=hor --table='"tDocument*"'

processSQLNamePattern will output

    c.relname ~ '^(tDocument\*)$'

and both the instructions will not find those tables.

I suggest to add a parameter to the processSQLNamePattern function to choose between a case-sensitive or case-insensitive compare

c.relname ~ '^(tdocument*)$'
c.relname ~* '^(tdocument*)$'

and to use it in the expand_table_name_patterns method of pg_dump.c.

Bye
Andrea
matfanjol@user.sf.net