alter table add x wrong error position

On Sunday, January 7, 2024, jian he <jian.universality@gmail.com> wrote:

hi.
Maybe this is a small printout err_position bug.

create table atacc2 ( test int, a int, b int) ;
success tests:
alter table atacc2 add CONSTRAINT x PRIMARY KEY (id, b );
alter table atacc2 add CONSTRAINT x PRIMARY KEY (id, b a);
alter table atacc2 add CONSTRAINT x PRIMARY KEYa (id, b);

tests have problem:
alter table atacc2 add constraints x unique (test, a, b);
ERROR: syntax error at or near "("
LINE 1: alter table atacc2 add constraints x unique (test, a, b);

^
ADD either following with the optional keyword "COLUMN" or
"CONSTRAINT" as the doc.
so I should expect the '^' point at "constraints"?

It’s finding “… add column_name data_type column_constraint” then dies at
the parenthesis. So indeed the care t should be pointing where it probably
is, at the parenthesis that the error is referring to.

David J.

On 2024-Jan-08, jian he wrote:

hi.
Maybe this is a small printout err_position bug.

create table atacc2 ( test int, a int, b int) ;
success tests:
alter table atacc2 add CONSTRAINT x PRIMARY KEY (id, b );
alter table atacc2 add CONSTRAINT x PRIMARY KEY (id, b a);
alter table atacc2 add CONSTRAINT x PRIMARY KEYa (id, b);

tests have problem:
alter table atacc2 add constraints x unique (test, a, b);
ERROR: syntax error at or near "("
LINE 1: alter table atacc2 add constraints x unique (test, a, b);

^
ADD either following with the optional keyword "COLUMN" or
"CONSTRAINT" as the doc.
so I should expect the '^' point at "constraints"?

Here you're saying to add a column called constraints, of
type x; then UNIQUE is parsed by columnDef as ColQualList, which goes to
the ColConstraintElem production starting with the UNIQUE keyword:

| UNIQUE opt_unique_null_treatment opt_definition OptConsTableSpace

so the next thing could be opt_unique_null_treatment or opt_definition
or OptConsTableSpace or going back to ColQualList, but none of those
start with a '(' parens. So the ( doesn't have a match and you get the
syntax error.

If you don't misspell CONSTRAINT as "constraints", there's no issue.

I don't see any way to improve this. You can't forbid misspellings of
the keyword CONSTRAINT, because they can be column names.

alter table atacc2 add cnstrnt x unique (test, a, b);
ERROR: error de sintaxis en o cerca de «(»
LÍNEA 1: alter table atacc2 add cnstrnt x unique (test, a, b);
^

--
Álvaro Herrera Breisgau, Deutschland — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/