From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: pgsql-committers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: pgsql: Add labels to help make psql's hidden queries more understandabl
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:37:02 +0000
Message-ID: <E1w5mlZ-001YlF-1E@gemulon.postgresql.org> (raw)
Add labels to help make psql's hidden queries more understandable.
We recommend looking at psql's "-E" output to help understand the
system catalogs, but in some cases (particularly table displays)
there's a bunch of rather impenetrable SQL there. As a small
improvement, label each query issued by describe.c with a short
description of its purpose. The code is arranged so that the
labels also appear as SQL comments in the server log, if the
server is logging these commands.
We could expand this policy to every use of PSQLexec(), but most of
the ones outside describe.c are issuing simple commands like "BEGIN"
or "COMMIT", which don't seem to need such glosses. I did add
labels to the commands issued by \sf, \sv and friends.
Also, make the -E and log output for hidden queries say
"INTERNAL QUERY" not just "QUERY", to distinguish them from
user-written queries.
Author: Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: David Christensen <david+pg@pgguru.net>
Reviewed-by: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAKAnmmJz8Hh=8Ru8jgzySPWmLBhnv4=oc_0KRiz-UORJ0Dex+w@mail.gmail.com
Branch
------
master
Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/41d69e6dccad6ef26511a466e6484bc8807362cf
Modified Files
--------------
src/bin/psql/command.c | 14 ++-
src/bin/psql/common.c | 4 +-
src/bin/psql/describe.c | 308 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
3 files changed, 226 insertions(+), 100 deletions(-)
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To: pgsql-committers@postgresql.org
Cc: tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, pgsql-committers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: pgsql: Add labels to help make psql's hidden queries more understandabl
In-Reply-To: <E1w5mlZ-001YlF-1E@gemulon.postgresql.org>
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