Re: [PATCH] Add --syntax to postgres for SQL syntax checking

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: walther@technowledgy.de
Cc: Josef Šimánek <josef.simanek@gmail.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@enterprisedb.com>, "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>, Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2024-05-15T19:01:25Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
walther@technowledgy.de writes:
> Tom Lane:
>> BTW, if you do feel that a pure grammar check is worthwhile, you
>> should look at the ecpg preprocessor, which does more or less that
>> with the SQL portions of its input.

> Would working with ecpg allow to get back a parse tree of the query to 
> do stuff with that?

No, ecpg isn't interested in building a syntax tree.

> This is really what is missing for the ecosystem. A libpqparser for 
> tools to use: Formatters, linters, query rewriters, simple syntax 
> checkers... they are all missing access to postgres' own parser.

To get to that, you'd need some kind of agreement on what the syntax
tree is.  I doubt our existing implementation would be directly useful
to very many tools, and even if it is, do they want to track constant
version-to-version changes?

			regards, tom lane