Re: [HACKERS] psql and libpq fixes

On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Thomas Lockhart wrote:

> > > > FYI, the commands are
> > > > \set EXIT_ON_ERROR
> > > > and
> > > > \unset EXIT_ON_ERROR
> > > > It's a normal psql variable, but incidentally the syntax seems kind of
> > > > easy to remember.
> > > Can we change that to the more standard ON_ERROR_STOP?
> 
> Any chance of multi-word options? Like "\set on error stop"?

Actually, that command would set "on" to the value of "errorstop". \set
doesn't have any hard-coded parsing rules, like the SQL look-a-similar, it
just sets variables. They can carry configuration information (like the
above), application state (LASTOID), or whatever you want (\set foo `date
%Y` \\ insert into mytbl values (:foo);). Kind of like a shell or Tcl, I
think.

> And at least part of the reason other systems can do some error
> recovery is that they decouple the parser from the backend, so the
> parser is carried closer to the client, and the client can be more
> certain about what is being done. But that carries a lot of baggage
> too...
> 
> If/when we do get more decoupling, it might be done through a Corba
> interface, which would allow us to get away from the string-based
> client/server protocol, and will handle typing, marshalling, byte
> ordering, etc more-or-less transparently.

At that point we may choose to write a completely new client. ;)

-- 
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders vaeg 10:115
peter_e@gmx.net                   75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/            Sweden