From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
cc: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Extending outfuncs support to utility statements
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Comments: In-reply-to Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	message dated "Thu, 22 Sep 2022 12:16:30 -0400"
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Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2022 12:48:47 -0400
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I wrote:
> I think this is the issue Peter mentioned about needing to distinguish
> between empty strings and NULL strings.  We're going to need to rethink
> the behavior of pg_strtok() a bit to fix that.

After staring at the code a bit, I think we don't need to touch
pg_strtok() per se.  I propose that this can be resolved with changes
at the next higher level.  Let's make outToken print NULL as <> as
it always has, but print an empty string as "" (two double quotes).
If the raw input string is two double quotes, print it as \"" to
disambiguate.  This'd require a catversion bump when committed,
but I don't think there are any showstopper problems otherwise.

I'll work on fleshing that idea out.

			regards, tom lane