Re: pg_get_functiondef forgets about most GUC_LIST_INPUT GUCs

At Mon, 19 Mar 2018 23:07:13 -0400, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote in <10037.1521515233@sss.pgh.pa.us>
> Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz> writes:
> > On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 07:15:36PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> This is a good thing not least because all the GUC_LIST_QUOTE variables
> >> are in core.  I've been trying to think of a way that we could have
> >> correct behavior for variables that the core backend doesn't know about
> >> and whose extension shlibs aren't currently loaded, and I can't come up
> >> with one.  So I think that in practice, we have to document that
> >> GUC_LIST_QUOTE is unsupported for extension variables
> 
> > I would propose to add a sentence on the matter at the bottom of the
> > CREATE FUNCTION page.  Even with that, the handling of items in the list
> > is incorrect with any patches on this thread: the double quotes should
> > be applied to each element of the list, not the whole list.
> 
> No, because all the places we are worried about are interpreting the
> contents of proconfig or setconfig columns, and we know that that info
> has been through flatten_set_variable_args().  If that function thought
> that GUC_LIST_QUOTE was applicable, it already did the appropriate
> quoting, and we can't quote over that without making a mess.  But if it
> did not think that GUC_LIST_QUOTE was applicable, then its output can
> just be treated as a single string, and that will work fine.
> 
> Our problem basically is that if we don't know the variable that was
> being processed, we can't be sure whether GUC_LIST_QUOTE was used.
> I don't currently see a solution to that other than insisting that
> GUC_LIST_QUOTE only be used for known core GUCs.

The documentation of SET command says as the follows. (CREATE
FUNCTION says a bit different but seems working in the same way)

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/sql-set.html

> SET [ SESSION | LOCAL ] configuration_parameter { TO | = } { value | 'value' | DEFAULT }
and

> value
> 
>   New value of parameter. Values can be specified as string
>   constants, identifiers, numbers, or comma-separated lists of
>   these, as appropriate for the particular parameter. DEFAULT can
>   be written to specify resetting the parameter to its default
>   value (that is, whatever value it would have had if no SET had
>   been executed in the current session).

According to this description, a comma-separated list enclosed
with single quotes is a valid list value. (I remenber I was
trapped by the description.)

I should be stupid but couldn't we treat quoted comma-separated
list as a bare list if it is the only value in the argument? I
think no one sets such values containing commas as
temp_tablespaces, *_preload_libraries nor search_path.

But of course it may break something and may break some
extensions.

regards,

-- 
Kyotaro Horiguchi
NTT Open Source Software Center