Thread

Re: [PATCH] psql: add size-based sorting options (O/o) for tables and indexes

Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> — 2025-11-26T13:01:45Z

Hi

st 26. 11. 2025 v 13:44 odesílatel Euler Taveira <euler@eulerto.com> napsal:

> On Wed, Nov 26, 2025, at 4:48 AM, M.Atıf Ceylan wrote:
> > Hello,
> > This patch adds two new meta-command modifiers for \dt(+) and \di(+):
> >
> >   - O  : sort by total relation size descending
> >   - o  : sort by total relation size ascending
> >
>
> Thanks for your contribution. Register your patch in the next commitfest
> [1] so
> we don't loose track of it.
>
> I didn't look at your patch but I was wondering if a general solution
> isn't a
> better way to add this feature. I wouldn't modify these specific psql
> meta-commands, instead, I would add a new psql meta-command that defines
> this
> property for all objects if applicable.
>
> \sort [ name | size [ asc | desc ] ]
>
> I thought about a list to be cover other sort cases too but if things
> starting
> to be complex, it is time to write your own query.
>

It is big question - if there should be specialized metacommand, or just
variable or \pset setting

it can be

\set PREFERRED_ORDER size_desc
\pset preffered_order size_desc



>
> With a parameter, it appends the ORDER BY clause in the SQL commands
> executed by
> psql if applicable. Without a parameter, it uses the current behavior.
>

There were a lot of proposals related to this topic some years ago. I wrote
a lot of variants of this patch
Generic design is very big, and solutions like proposed are not generic
:-). We talked about this feature for maybe more than one year, and we
didn't find a generally acceptable design.

At the end I wrote pspg, and the sort can be done (over result) there.
Using a vertical cursor (column cursor) is very natural and user friendly.

https://github.com/okbob/pspg

Regards

Pavel


>
>
> [1] https://commitfest.postgresql.org/57/
>
>
> --
> Euler Taveira
> EDB   https://www.enterprisedb.com/
>
>
>