Received: from malur.postgresql.org ([217.196.149.56]) by arkaria.postgresql.org with esmtps (TLS1.3) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (Exim 4.94.2) (envelope-from ) id 1uUCAR-00H5bi-U0 for pgsql-hackers@arkaria.postgresql.org; Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:31:03 +0000 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=malur.postgresql.org) by malur.postgresql.org with esmtp (Exim 4.94.2) (envelope-from ) id 1uUCAP-00FYgg-TK for pgsql-hackers@arkaria.postgresql.org; Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:31:02 +0000 Received: from magus.postgresql.org ([2a02:c0:301:0:ffff::29]) by malur.postgresql.org with esmtps (TLS1.3) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (Exim 4.94.2) (envelope-from ) id 1uUCAP-00FYgY-Jz for pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org; Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:31:02 +0000 Received: from sss.pgh.pa.us ([68.162.161.243]) by magus.postgresql.org with esmtps (TLS1.3) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (Exim 4.96) (envelope-from ) id 1uUCAO-003uL6-0b for pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org; Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:31:01 +0000 Received: from sss1.sss.pgh.pa.us (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sss.pgh.pa.us (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTP id 55OMUweX1174076; Tue, 24 Jun 2025 18:30:58 -0400 From: Tom Lane To: "David G. Johnston" cc: PostgreSQL Hackers Subject: Re: Add \pset options for boolean value display In-reply-to: References: Comments: In-reply-to "David G. Johnston" message dated "Tue, 24 Jun 2025 15:18:31 -0700" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-ID: <1174074.1750804258.1@sss.pgh.pa.us> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2025 18:30:58 -0400 Message-ID: <1174075.1750804258@sss.pgh.pa.us> List-Id: List-Help: List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Owner: List-Archive: Archived-At: Precedence: bulk "David G. Johnston" writes: > On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 8:24 PM David G. Johnston < > david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote: >> It's \pset null for boolean values > v1, Ready aside from bike-shedding the name. Do we really want this? It's the sort of thing that has a strong potential to break anything that reads psql output --- and I'd urge you to think that human consumers of psql output may well be the minority. There's an awful lot of scripts out there. I concede that \pset null hasn't had a huge amount of pushback, but that doesn't mean that making boolean output unpredictable will be cost-free. And the costs won't be paid by you (or me), but by people who didn't ask for it. regards, tom lane