[Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>]

David Wheeler complained over in [1] that genbki.pl fails to produce a
useful error message if there's anything wrong in a catalog data file.
He's right about that, but the band-aid patch he proposed doesn't
improve the situation much.  The actual problem is that key error
messages in genbki.pl expect $bki_values->{line_number} to be set,
which it is not because we're invoking Catalog::ParseData with
$preserve_formatting = 0, and that runs a fast path that doesn't do
line-by-line processing and hence doesn't/can't fill that field.

I'm quite sure that those error cases worked as-intended when first
coded.  I did not check the git history, but I suppose that somebody
added the non-preserve_formatting fast path later without any
consideration for the damage it was doing to error reporting ability.
I'm of the opinion that this change was penny-wise and pound-foolish.
On my machine, the time to re-make the bki files with the fast path
enabled is 0.597s, and with it disabled (measured with the attached
quick-hack patch) it's 0.612s.  Is that savings worth future hackers
having to guess what they broke and where in a large .dat file?

As you can see from the quick-hack patch, it's kind of a mess to use
the $preserve_formatting = 1 case, because there are a lot of loops
that have to be taught to ignore comment lines, which we don't really
care about except in reformat_dat_file.pl.  What I suggest doing, but
have not yet coded up, is to nuke the fast path in Catalog::ParseData
and reinterpret the $preserve_formatting argument as controlling
whether comments and whitespace are entered in the output data
structure, but not whether we parse it line-by-line.  That should fix
this problem with zero change in the callers, and also buy back a
little bit of the cost compared to this quick hack.

Thoughts?

			regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/60EF4E11-BC1C-4034-B37B-695662D28AD2%40justatheory.com

Attachments:

fix-genbki-error-detection-hack.patch (text/x-diff, 5.2K) download
diff --git a/src/backend/catalog/Catalog.pm b/src/backend/catalog/Catalog.pm
index 55a8877aed..f4b13b600d 100644
--- a/src/backend/catalog/Catalog.pm
+++ b/src/backend/catalog/Catalog.pm
@@ -573,6 +573,7 @@ sub FindDefinedSymbolFromData
 	my ($data, $symbol) = @_;
 	foreach my $row (@{$data})
 	{
+		next if !ref $row;
 		if ($row->{oid_symbol} eq $symbol)
 		{
 			return $row->{oid};
diff --git a/src/backend/catalog/genbki.pl b/src/backend/catalog/genbki.pl
index 94afdc5491..df8493e39c 100644
--- a/src/backend/catalog/genbki.pl
+++ b/src/backend/catalog/genbki.pl
@@ -93,11 +93,14 @@ foreach my $header (@ARGV)
 	# Not all catalogs have a data file.
 	if (-e $datfile)
 	{
-		my $data = Catalog::ParseData($datfile, $schema, 0);
+		my $data = Catalog::ParseData($datfile, $schema, 1);
 		$catalog_data{$catname} = $data;
 
 		foreach my $row (@$data)
 		{
+			# Ignore comment lines.
+			next if !ref $row;
+
 			# Generate entries for pg_description and pg_shdescription.
 			if (defined $row->{descr})
 			{
@@ -224,6 +227,7 @@ my $C_COLLATION_OID =
 # can't do it, for lack of easy access to the other catalog.
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_class} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$row->{relnatts} = scalar(@{ $catalogs{ $row->{relname} }->{columns} });
 }
 
@@ -234,6 +238,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_class} })
 my %amoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_am} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$amoids{ $row->{amname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -241,6 +246,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_am} })
 my %authidoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_authid} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$authidoids{ $row->{rolname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -248,6 +254,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_authid} })
 my %classoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_class} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$classoids{ $row->{relname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -255,6 +262,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_class} })
 my %collationoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_collation} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$collationoids{ $row->{collname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -262,6 +270,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_collation} })
 my %langoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_language} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$langoids{ $row->{lanname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -269,6 +278,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_language} })
 my %namespaceoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_namespace} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$namespaceoids{ $row->{nspname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -276,6 +286,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_namespace} })
 my %opcoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_opclass} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	# There is no unique name, so we need to combine access method
 	# and opclass name.
 	my $key = sprintf "%s/%s", $row->{opcmethod}, $row->{opcname};
@@ -286,6 +297,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_opclass} })
 my %operoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_operator} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	# There is no unique name, so we need to invent one that contains
 	# the relevant type names.
 	my $key = sprintf "%s(%s,%s)",
@@ -297,6 +309,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_operator} })
 my %opfoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_opfamily} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	# There is no unique name, so we need to combine access method
 	# and opfamily name.
 	my $key = sprintf "%s/%s", $row->{opfmethod}, $row->{opfname};
@@ -307,6 +320,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_opfamily} })
 my %procoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_proc} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	# Generate an entry under just the proname (corresponds to regproc lookup)
 	my $prokey = $row->{proname};
 	if (defined $procoids{$prokey})
@@ -338,6 +352,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_proc} })
 my %tablespaceoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_tablespace} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$tablespaceoids{ $row->{spcname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -345,6 +360,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_tablespace} })
 my %tsconfigoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_ts_config} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$tsconfigoids{ $row->{cfgname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -352,6 +368,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_ts_config} })
 my %tsdictoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_ts_dict} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$tsdictoids{ $row->{dictname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -359,6 +376,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_ts_dict} })
 my %tsparseroids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_ts_parser} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$tsparseroids{ $row->{prsname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -366,6 +384,7 @@ foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_ts_parser} })
 my %tstemplateoids;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_ts_template} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
 	$tstemplateoids{ $row->{tmplname} } = $row->{oid};
 }
 
@@ -374,6 +393,8 @@ my %typeoids;
 my %types;
 foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{pg_type} })
 {
+	next if !ref $row;
+
 	# for OID macro substitutions
 	$typeoids{ $row->{typname} } = $row->{oid};
 
@@ -582,6 +603,7 @@ EOM
 	# Ordinary catalog with a data file
 	foreach my $row (@{ $catalog_data{$catname} })
 	{
+		next if !ref $row;
 		my %bki_values = %$row;
 
 		# Complain about unrecognized keys; they are presumably misspelled