traced this back to what I believe is an error in the sgml file used to
generate this comment, found in pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml.


Stephen Birch

> > It would be nice for new users; I think it would make it easier
> > for them to actually set out and do it.  Many new users are
> > of the not-so-knowledgable variety, and shell scripting isn't
> > something they want to undertake.
>
> Can someone modify the vacuumdb shell script to do that?
i tried it... it seems to work

neko@kredit.sth.sz

initdb. No more obscure dependencies on environment variables or paths.
It
now finds the templates and the right postgres itself (with cmd line
options as fallback). It also no longer depends on $USER (su safe), and
doesn't advertise that --username allows you to install the db as a
different user, since that doesn't work anyway. Also, recovery and
cleanup
on all errors. Consistent options, clearer documentation.

Please take a look at this and adopt it if you feel it's safe enough. I
have simulated all the stupid circumstances I could think of, but you
never know with shell scripts.

Oh yeah, you can give the postgres user a default password now.

--
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

anywhere from zero to two TODO items.

* Allow flag to control COPY input/output of NULLs

I got this:
COPY table .... [ WITH NULL AS 'string' ]
which does what you'd expect. The default is \N, otherwise you can use
empty strings, etc. On Copy In this acts like a filter: every data item
that looks like 'string' becomes a NULL. Pretty straightforward.

This also seems to be related to

* Make postgres user have a password by default

If I recall this discussion correctly, the problem was actually that the
default password for the postgres (or any) user is in fact "\N", because
of the way copy is used. With this change, the file pg_pwd is copied out
with nulls as empty strings, so if someone doesn't have a password, the
password is just '', which one would expect from a new account. I don't
think anyone really wants a hard-coded default password.

Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

Try to provide a more lucid discussion in 'Using Aggregate Functions'
tutorial section.

at all, and because of shell quoting rules this can't be fixed, so I put
in error messages to that end.

Also, calling create or drop database in a transaction block is not so
good either, because the file system mysteriously refuses to roll back rm
calls on transaction aborts. :) So I put in checks to see if a transaction
is in progress and signal an error.

Also I put the whole call in a transaction of its own to be able to roll
back changes to pg_database in case the file system operations fail.

The alternative location issues I posted recently were untouched, awaiting
the outcome of that discussion. Other than that, this should be much more
fool-proof now.

The docs I cleaned up as well.

Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

against the sources from one hour ago and contain all the portable and
up
to date stuff.

A few other CVS "householding" things you might want to take care of:

* Remove the src/bin/cleardbdir directory

* Remove the file src/bin/psql/sql_help.h from the repository, as it is
a derived file and is build by the release_prep.

Peter Eisentraut

them into the scripts dir. I also added a --list option to show already
installed languages.

This whole moving and renaming totally confused CVS and my checked out
copy got completely fried last night. When you apply the source patch,
please make sure that all the directories src/bin/{create|destroy}* as
well as vacuumdb, cleardbdir are gone and that all the scripts (7) are
in
scripts/.

Meanwhile I am still puzzled about what happened with the docs patch.
Because I don't know what you got now, the second attachment contains
the
files

ref/allfiles.sgml
ref/commands.sgml
ref/createlang.sgml
ref/droplang.sgml
doc/src/sgml/Makefile

Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

This one should work much better than the one I sent in previously. The
functionality is the same, but the patch was missing one file resulting
in
the compilation failing. The docs also received a minor fix.

Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

rate
  it's better than what used to be there.

* Does proper SQL "host variable" substitution as pointed out by Andreas
  Zeugwetter (thanks): select * from :foo; Also some changes in how ':'
  and ';' are treated (escape with \ to send to backend). This does
_not_
  affect the '::' cast operator, but perhaps others that contain : or ;
  (but there are none right now).

* To show description with a <something> listing, append '?' to command
  name, e.g., \df?. This seemed to be the convenient and logical
solution.
  Or append a '+' to see more useless information, e.g., \df+.

* Fixed fflush()'ing bug pointed out by Jan during the regression test
  discussion.

* Added LastOid variable. This ought to take care of TODO item "Add a
  function to return the last inserted oid, for use in psql scripts"
  (under CLIENTS)
  E.g.,
insert into foo values(...);
insert into bar values(..., :LastOid);
\echo $LastOid

* \d command shows constraints, rules, and triggers defined on the table
  (in addition to indices)

* Various fixes, optimizations, corrections

* Documentation update as well


Note: This now requires snprintf(), which, if necessary, is taken from
src/backend/port. This is certainly a little weird, but it should
suffice
until a source tree cleanup is done.

Enjoy.

--
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

 <term> not allowed in paragraphs; <option> is a better choice.

up debugging options for postmaster and postgres programs.  postmaster
-d is no longer optional.  Documentation updates.

 Seems to read better this way...

 committed, but will be within a week or two).
Actually include the reference page into the docs...

functions.  One problem that I have encountered with the function
manager is that it does not allow the user to define type conversion
functions that convert between user types. For instance if mytype1,
mytype2, and mytype3 are three Postgresql user types, and if I wish to
define Postgresql conversion functions like

I run into problems, because the Postgresql dynamic loader would look
for a single link symbol, mytype3, for both pieces of object code.  If
I just change the name of one of the Postgresql functions (to make the
symbols distinct), the automatic type conversion that Postgresql uses,
for example, when matching operators to arguments no longer finds the
type conversion function.

The solution that I propose, and have implemented in the attatched
patch extends the CREATE FUNCTION syntax as follows. In the first case
above I use the link symbol mytype2_to_mytype3 for the link object
that implements the first conversion function, and define the
Postgresql operator with the following syntax

The patch includes changes to the parser to include the altered
syntax, changes to the ProcedureStmt node in nodes/parsenodes.h,
changes to commands/define.c to handle the extra information in the AS
clause, and changes to utils/fmgr/dfmgr.c that alter the way that the
dynamic loader figures out what link symbol to use.  I store the
string for the link symbol in the prosrc text attribute of the pg_proc
table which is currently unused in rows that reference dynamically
loaded
functions.


Bernie Frankpitt