Re: Help needed with standard_conforming_strings

On May 6, 2008, at 20:16, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:

> Here's some possible solutions, just to throw out there for thought:

Couldn't DBD::Pg just switch to using ' to escape quotes? I mean, the  
problem is DBD::Pg escaping in $dbh->quote(), is it not? In that case,  
Just escape ' and not \ if SCS is on.

Or am I missing something?

> 1) Check SCS on startup, and if on, use E'' from that point onward.
>
> 2) Check SCS via libpq before every quote call. If libpq is too old
> to know about SCS, check ourself via a SHOW call.
>
> 3) Check SCS via libpq before every quote call. If libpq is too old
> to know about SCS, do the same logic as #1
>
> 4) Have a switch that allows it to be toggled between #1 and #2/#3.
>
> 5) If the server version supports E'' (e.g. >= 8.2), use that all
> the time, period.

Bleh. I'm so glad I use placeholders. The E'' syntax is just so ugly.


> 6) Do #5, but allow a switch to turn it off or do some other behavior.
>
> #5 is probably the "safest", but also the least backwards compatible
> for anything generating quotes to use on an older version, and may
> very well break applications that aren't expecting the 'E'.
>
> I'm leaning towards #1 at the moment, but want to get some other
> minds to look at the problem. Also imagine a future world in which
> this is on by default and people routinely use backslashes to
> mean backslashes - should that weigh in our decision now?

YES!

> Finally,
> remember that long term we want to support custom types and custom
> quoting, so relying on the libpq quoting is probably not wise.

It's a start. I mean, for 99% of the cases, it's exactly what's  
needed. Anyone creating or using custom types probably know what  
they're doing and can do the quoting properly (or use placeholders!).

Best,

David