Horton

Re: display hot standby state in psql prompt

Jim Jones <jim.jones@uni-muenster.de>

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From: Jim Jones <jim.jones@uni-muenster.de>
To: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
Cc: Srinath Reddy Sadipiralla <srinath2133@gmail.com>, Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2025-10-23T23:07:41Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

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Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. psql: Add %i prompt escape to indicate hot standby status.

  2. Mark search_path as GUC_REPORT

Hi Nathan

On 23/10/2025 23:02, Nathan Bossart wrote:
> My first thought when looking at this thread/patch was that something like
> "read-write" might be a bit long for a psql prompt.  I probably would've
> chosen something like "r" or "ro" for read-only and "rw" for read-write.  I
> suppose you could argue that those are more difficult to see, and this
> seems particularly useful when you want to be sure that you won't
> inadvertently write any data.

I can see the appeal of keeping the indicator as short as possible in a
prompt, but that can also make it a bit harder to quickly distinguish
between the read/write and read-only states. In this case, clarity might
be more important than compactness. Then again, the traditional shell
prompt symbols ($, #) aren't exactly self-explanatory either, and people
seem fine with those :)

Although I prefer it being explicit in this case, I can live with either
approach. Do you think we should go for "ro" or "rw"?

Thanks for the review!

Best, Jim