Horton

Re: Fix unqualified catalog references in psql describe queries

Bertrand Drouvot <bertranddrouvot.pg@gmail.com>

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From: Bertrand Drouvot <bertranddrouvot.pg@gmail.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz>, Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com>, Postgres hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>, Fujii Masao <masao.fujii@gmail.com>, Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>, Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>, Ashutosh Bapat <ashutosh.bapat.oss@gmail.com>, Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>
Date: 2026-06-10T06:16:36Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Hi,

On Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 10:12:48PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz> writes:
> > On Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 09:08:50AM +0000, Bertrand Drouvot wrote:
> >> Now I wonder if we shoud not "protect" the operators too. They could also
> >> lead to wrong results (if not worst).
> 
> > Kind of true.  Still we have been pretty lax about the operators as
> > they also lead to less readable queries.
> 
> We disclaimed security against odd search_paths for these queries long ago,
> precisely because wrapping every operator in PG_OPERATOR(pg_catalog.*)
> would be far too tedious and destructive of readability --- not to
> mention that there are some syntaxes such as IN that don't even offer
> the option to do that.

I do agree that doing so would "destroy" the readability. I did not look in detail,
but what about forcing ALWAYS_SECURE_SEARCH_PATH_SQL before the queries and
restore the search_path once the query is done? (that way that would not impact
the readability)

Regards,

-- 
Bertrand Drouvot
PostgreSQL Contributors Team
RDS Open Source Databases
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com

Commits

  1. psql: Add some missing schema qualifications in describe.c

  2. SQL Property Graph Queries (SQL/PGQ)

  3. CREATE SUBSCRIPTION ... SERVER.