Re: proposal: possibility to read dumped table's name from file

On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 09:14:35PM +0100, Pavel Stehule wrote:
> Any short or long option can be read from this file in simple format - one
> option per line. Arguments inside double quotes can be multi lined. Row
> comments started by # and can be used everywhere.

Does this support even funkier table names ?

This tests a large number and fraction of characters in dbname/username, so all
of pg_dump has to continue supporting that:
./src/bin/pg_dump/t/010_dump_connstr.pl

I tested and it seems to work with -t "fooå"
But it didn't work with -t "foo\nbar" (literal newline).  Fix attached.
If you send another patch, please consider including a test case for quoted
names in long and short options.

> +static char *optsfilename = NULL;

> + * It assign the values of options to related DumpOption fields or to
> + * some global values. It is called from twice. First, for processing
> + * the command line argumens. Second, for processing an options from
> + * options file.

This didn't support multiple config files, nor config files which include
config files, as Dean and I mentioned.  I think the argument parsers should
themselves call the config file parser, as need be, so the last option
specification should override previous ones.

For example pg_dump --config-file=./pg_dump.conf --blobs should have blobs even
if the config file says --no-blobs.  (Command-line arguments normally take
precedence over config files, certainly if the argument is specified "later").
I think it'd be ok if it's recursive.  I made a quick hack to do that.

I doubt this will satisfy Stephen.  Personally, I would use this if it were a
plain and simple text config file (which for our purposes I would pass on
stdin), and I would almost certainly not use it if it were json.  But it'd be
swell if there were a standard config file format, that handled postgresql.conf
and maybe pg_hba.conf.

-- 
Justin