Re: review: psql: edit function, show function commands patch

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 10:49 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> This is actually my biggest concern about this patch - that it may be
>> just too much of a hassle to actually make it work for people.  I just
>> tried setting $EDITOR to MacOS's TextEdit program, and it turns out
>> that TextEdit doesn't understand +.  I'm afraid that we're going to
>> end up with a situation where it only works for people using emacs or
>> vi, and everyone else ends up with a broken install (and, possibly, no
>> clear idea how to fix it).
>
> [ disclaimer: I've not looked at the proposed patch yet ]
>
> It seems like this ought to be fairly easily surmountable as long as
> the patch is designed for failure.

It isn't.

> The fallback position is just that
> the line number does nothing, ie \ef foo just opens the editor and
> doesn't try to position the cursor anywhere special; nobody can complain
> about that because it's no worse than before.  What we need is to not
> try to force positioning if we don't recognize the editor.

Supposing for the moment that we could make it work that way, that
would be reasonable.

> I'm tempted
> to suggest forgetting about any user-configurable parameter and just
> provide code that strcmp's the $EDITOR value to see if it recognizes the
> editor name, otherwise do nothing.

With all due respect, that sounds like an amazingly bad idea. Surely,
we'll be forever getting patches to add $MYFAVORITEEDITOR to the list,
or complaints that it's not already included. While this is
superficially a Nice Thing to Have and I would certainly support it if
+linenumber were relatively universal, it's really a pretty minor
convenience when you come right down to it, and I am not at all
convinced it is worth the hassle of trying to divine what piece of
syntax will equip the user's choice of editor with the necessary
amount of clue.

--
Robert Haas
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