From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123@gmail.com>
cc: John Naylor <johncnaylorls@gmail.com>,
        Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>,
        pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Can we remove support for standard_conforming_strings = off yet?
In-reply-to: <aVuoC2zL3DA8tgOT@jrouhaud>
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Comments: In-reply-to Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123@gmail.com>
	message dated "Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:01:15 +0800"
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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2026 13:31:53 -0500
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Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123@gmail.com> writes:
> On Mon, Jan 05, 2026 at 05:03:48PM +0700, John Naylor wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 1, 2026 at 12:04 AM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>>> Personally I would call it a deal-breaker if I thought it'd affect
>>> more than a very very tiny number of people.  But the entire premise
>>> of this patch is that nobody is using standard_conforming_strings =
>>> off in production anymore.  If that isn't true it's probably a
>>> mistake to go forward anyway.

>> FWIW, I spent a few minutes looking, and I only found issues from ~5
>> years ago about software not working with the setting off. I didn't
>> see any details on what they were running in the application stack
>> that required it:
>> https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest/issues/1992
>> https://github.com/npgsql/npgsql/issues/3333

> I had another one ~4 years ago:
> https://github.com/powa-team/powa-archivist/issues/51
> Since I fixed powa-archivist at that time, I don't know if anyone else would
> have faced the same problem, although the OP is likely still using the same
> setting.

So, nobody's actually spoken against this change.  I think we should
go forward with it, for the reasons I gave at the top of the thread
and because "if not now, when?".  I have little doubt that if there
is anyone still running with standard_conforming_strings = off, they
aren't going to change until forced to.  So unless we want to live
with the potential security hazard forever, we're going to have to
make a breaking change sometime.

			regards, tom lane