"David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@xxxxxxxxx> writes: >> On 10/6/23 08:45, Ron wrote: >>> Nah. "The programmer -- and DBA -- on the Clapham omnibus" quite >>> reasonably expects that COPY table_name TO (output)" copies all the >>> columns listed in "\d table_name". > Sure, but it doesn't. Mainly since copy's original design was intended to > solve the dump/restore problem and it doesn't make sense to specify data > for inbound generated data. So while we do have a POLA violation here the > desirability to now fix it years later is basically zero. And the current > behavior is at least defensible and consistent. And there is a very easy > way to get the desired output making any change that much harder a sell. Changing the default behavior now is certainly a non-starter. I don't really see any backwards-compatibility problem with allowing cases that had been errors, though. regards, tom lane
