Remove obsolete mention of backslashes as escapes

On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 3:54 AM Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
wrote:

The documentation in

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-syntax-lexical.html#SQL-SYNTAX-DOLLAR-QUOTING
says that

"While the standard syntax for specifying string constants is usually
convenient,
it can be difficult to understand when the desired string contains many
single
quotes or backslashes, since each of those must be doubled."

But this has been obsolete ever since version 9.1, when
"standard_conforming_strings"
started to default to "on". It has confused at least one reader:
https://dba.stackexchange.com/q/325850/176905

So I propose to remove the mention of backslashes there.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

+1 I like this.. It's more clear and more accurate!

Thanks, patch applied back to PG 11.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 09:54:11AM +0200, Laurenz Albe wrote:

The documentation in
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-syntax-lexical.html#SQL-SYNTAX-DOLLAR-QUOTING
says that

"While the standard syntax for specifying string constants is usually convenient,
it can be difficult to understand when the desired string contains many single
quotes or backslashes, since each of those must be doubled."

But this has been obsolete ever since version 9.1, when "standard_conforming_strings"
started to default to "on". It has confused at least one reader:
https://dba.stackexchange.com/q/325850/176905

So I propose to remove the mention of backslashes there.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

From 282d2dae27524aef37cdafe02e4833894bf5892c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2023 09:48:20 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Remove obsolete mention of backslashes as escapes

Since version 9.1, standard_conforming_strings defaults to "on".
So the remark that backslashes must be doubled has been obsolete
for a long time and should be removed. It is more confusing than
helpful by now.
---
doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml
index 5668ab0143..3ba844057f 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/syntax.sgml
@@ -555,7 +555,7 @@ U&'d!0061t!+000061' UESCAPE '!'
<para>
While the standard syntax for specifying string constants is usually
convenient, it can be difficult to understand when the desired string
-     contains many single quotes or backslashes, since each of those must
+     contains many single quotes, since each of those must
be doubled. To allow more readable queries in such situations,
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> provides another way, called
<quote>dollar quoting</quote>, to write string constants.
-- 
2.39.2

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

Only you can decide what is important to you.

On Fri, 2023-09-08 at 17:25 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Thanks, patch applied back to PG 11.

Thank you!

Laurenz Albe