To: Ian Barwick <barwick@gmx.net>
Cc: dbi-dev@perl.org, pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Patch for DBD::Pg pg_relcheck problem 
In-reply-to: <200212100034.31936.barwick@gmx.net> 
References: <200212091631.00125.barwick@gmx.net>
	<8159.1039449832@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<200212100034.31936.barwick@gmx.net>
Comments: In-reply-to Ian Barwick <barwick@gmx.net>
	message dated "Tue, 10 Dec 2002 00:34:31 +0100"
Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 18:47:30 -0500
Message-ID: <20819.1039477650@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Ian Barwick <barwick@gmx.net> writes:
> So out with the candle wax and pins ;-). Am I right
> in thinking that the string returned by SELECT version()
> starts with the word "PostgreSQL" followed by:
>   a space;
>   a single digit indicating the major version number;
>   a full stop / decimal point;
>   a single digit indicating the minor version number;
> and either "interim release" number (e.g. ".1" in the case of 7.3.1), or
> "devel", "rc1" etc. ?

I would recommend parsing it the same way pg_dump does, see
_check_database_version().  Looks like it's basically skip-11-chars-
and-sscanf.  Note the lack of assumptions about numbers of digits.

In the next protocol version update (hopefully 7.4) I would like to see
the basic version string (eg, "7.3.1" or "7.4devel") delivered to the
client automatically during connection startup and then available from a
libpq inquiry function.  This would eliminate the need to call version()
explicitly and to know that you must skip "PostgreSQL " in its output.
However, it will only help for clients/libraries that are willing to
deal exclusively with 7.4-or-newer backends, so it will take a few
releases to become really useful.

			regards, tom lane