Feedback-ID: ie3de48e3:Fastmail
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2026 16:52:49 +0200
From: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
To: Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com>
Cc: jian he <jian.universality@gmail.com>,
	Zsolt Parragi <zsolt.parragi@percona.com>, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Fix bug of CHECK constraint enforceability recursion
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On 2026-Jun-08, Chao Li wrote:

> > Keep errmsg() messages on a single line to improve grepability.
G 
> I’m not sure this needs to be changed. The message is quite long, and
> there are existing precedents for splitting long errmsg() strings
> across multiple lines. For example:
> ```
> 	if (getExtensionOfObject(NamespaceRelationId, nspOid) == extensionOid)
> 		ereport(ERROR,
> 				(errcode(ERRCODE_OBJECT_NOT_IN_PREREQUISITE_STATE),
> 				 errmsg("cannot move extension \"%s\" into schema \"%s\" "
> 						"because the extension contains the schema",
> 						extensionName, newschema)));
> ```
>
> So, this does not seem to be a strict rule. I also don’t think this
> hurts grepability much in practice, since searching for the
> distinctive part of the message still finds it.

Personally I find myself upset whenever I come across messages split in
this way.  Kindly do not add more if you can avoid it.  It [my dislike
for that] is not strong enough to create a commit to stitch them back,
but I frequently do so in my local editor and later discard the change
when collecting changes to commit via "git add -p".

Greppability is subjective -- you don't know which part is
"distinctive".  For instance, when looking for message
refactoring/rewording I grep for things such as "cannot.*schema" or
such, and any arbitrary splitting could potentially thwart that.


Lastly, when the message is in a single line, grammatical mistakes are
easier to see, such as the missing "the" in 
   errmsg("cannot mark inherited constraint \"%s\" as NOT ENFORCED because [the] matching constraint on parent table \"%s\" is ENFORCED", ...)


In this case I would also move the NOT ENFORCED clause out of the
translatable message and replace it with %s; and I'm wondering whether
the part after "because" should be errdetail or not.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera        Breisgau, Deutschland  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"Having your biases confirmed independently is how scientific progress is
made, and hence made our great society what it is today" (Mary Gardiner)