Re: Add \pset options for boolean value display

On Tue, Jun 24, 2025 at 3:30 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

> "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes:
> > On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 8:24 PM David G. Johnston <
> > david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> It's \pset null for boolean values
>
> > v1, Ready aside from bike-shedding the name.
>
> Do we really want this?  It's the sort of thing that has a strong
> potential to break anything that reads psql output --- and I'd
> urge you to think that human consumers of psql output may well
> be the minority.  There's an awful lot of scripts out there.
>
> I concede that \pset null hasn't had a huge amount of pushback,
> but that doesn't mean that making boolean output unpredictable
> will be cost-free.  And the costs won't be paid by you (or me),
> but by people who didn't ask for it.
>
>
If we didn't use psql to produce all of our examples I'd be a bit more
accepting of this position.  Yes, users of it need to do so responsibly.
But we have tons of pretty-presentation-oriented options in psql so, yes, I
do believe this is well within its charter.

David J.