Re: TOAST versus toast

On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 3:26 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> writes:
> > During some recent reviews, I came across some comments mentioning "toast" ...
> > TOAST is a PostgreSQL acronym for "The Oversized-Attribute Storage
> > Technique" [1].
>
> It is indeed an acronym, but usages such as "toasting" are all over
> our code and docs, as you see.  I question whether changing that
> to "TOASTing" improves readability.  I agree that consistently
> saying "TOAST table" not "toast table" is a good idea, but I'm
> not quite convinced that removing every last lower-case occurrence
> is a win, especially in these combined forms.
>

Hi, thanks for the reply.

How about I reduce the scope by only tackling the uncontroversial
stuff, and leave all those "combined forms" for another day?

Attached is the reduced patch for changes to the documentation.

> > - "toasted" becomes "TOASTed".
> > - "toastable" becomes "TOAST-able"
>
> Those two choices seem inconsistent...
>
> > - "untoasted" becomes "un-TOASTed"
> > - "detoasted" is unchanged (and so is "detoast")
>
> Hm, there seems a risk of confusion between "not toasted" (a
> statement of fact about the contents of a Datum) versus "detoasting"
> (the act of expanding a toasted datum to full form).  I'd prefer
> to say "not toasted" than "untoasted" because the latter feels like
> it could also mean "detoasted".  (And as I write this para, I'm
> having a hard time wanting to upcase the words, which reinforces
> my doubts about s/toast/TOAST/g.)

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Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia