From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>
cc: pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: v12 and pg_restore -f-
In-reply-to: <20191006190839.GE18030@telsasoft.com>
References: <20191006190839.GE18030@telsasoft.com>
Comments: In-reply-to Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>
	message dated "Sun, 06 Oct 2019 14:08:39 -0500"
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Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2019 16:43:13 -0400
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[ redirecting to -hackers ]

Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com> writes:
> I saw this and updated our scripts with pg_restore -f-

> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/release-12.html
> |In pg_restore, require specification of -f - to send the dump contents =
to standard output (Euler Taveira)
> |Previously, this happened by default if no destination was specified, b=
ut that was deemed to be unfriendly.

> What I didn't realize at first is that -f- has no special meaning in v11=
 - it
> just writes a file called ./-

Ugh.  I didn't realize that either, or I would have made a stink about
this patch.  Reducing the risk of getting a dump spewed at you is
completely not worth the cost of making it impossible to have
cross-version-compatible scripting of pg_restore.

Perhaps we could change the back branches so that they interpret "-f -"
as "write to stdout", but without enforcing that you use that syntax.
Nobody is going to wish that to mean "write to a file named '-'", so
I don't think this would be an unacceptable change.

Alternatively, we could revert the v12 behavior change.  On the whole
that might be the wiser course.  I do not think the costs and benefits
of this change were all that carefully thought through.

			regards, tom lane