> Karsten.Hilbert@xxxxxxx wrote: > >> bryn@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: >> >> What we deal with in our ordinary professional work is SQL texts, program source texts, within these, SQL identifier texts, and then the conventional display of the results of SQL and program execution. To emphasize the point about resulst display, try "\d s.*" in "\t off" mode. >> >> [Allow me to re-write my bext few words, for sport.] >> >> But a SQL statement with the following text representation >> >> drop table "s.silly name” >> >> when presented to the psql CLI as a text command in its language by appending a semi-colon causes that program to respond with some text that tells me that there's no such table. > > And, indeed, there isn't. Perhaps there's a table s."silly name”. It is accidental if unfortunate that the <s.silly name> is quoted with ""'s in the \d output... I believe that you and I see things the same way, Karsten. Yes, it does seem at times that some things in PG are accidental—and sometimes prove to be unfortunate. Naturally, my questions to this list concern what know that I don’t understand. (Who knows what I think that I understand—but don’t. And who knows what I don’t even suspect is there waiting for me to try to understand.) To err is human—and it’s human, too, to misunderstand something when the proper understanding seems to be counter-intuitive. In my case, I developed my intuitions in the context of a different RDBMS with notions and terms of art that differ very significantly from PG’s—even though the core SQL syntax and semantics are deceptively similar. Maybe I should send posts to this list like this: « I just wrote and tested a PG implementation to do something I hadn’t done before. I was very impressed at how straightforward it was—and with how expressive of my intentions the text of my code seemed to be. Well done PG. » I do very often have that experience. But I’ve never seen a contribution along those lines in this forum—and I’ve formed the impression that it would be out of place.
