Hi all, # What I'd like to do I've been working on the idea of a markdown format for psql as I had said in that thread : https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAB_COdiiwTmBcrmjXWCKiqkcPgf_bLodrUyb4GYE6pfKeoK2eg%40mail.gmail.com
An attempt was made a year ago (see here : https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAAYBy8bs%3D8vz6Ps_nLW24NJhqcxz4bsWBLawAiwWSPSLdWSmvA%40mail.gmail.com#eb7b6eb6daa60aac1f5fa001f934f89a), but didn't end up with something commitable. What's more, I quite disagree with `\pset linestyle markdown` option to have a markdown output in psql, I prefer `\pset format markdown`. # Some official doc about markdown So here are my thoughts (before writing any code) : 1. "Official" markdown seems to be the daring fireball project (see Aaron Schwartz's note here http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001189) 2. Official markdown doesn't support table formatting. Authors said we could just use HTML inside markdown to do so (it's quite not readable for a human, that's why I don't like this option) -> see here: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html 3. Table markdown is introduced in "Markdown Extra" that was first implemented in PHP (see here https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/#table) 4. I want to make the patch as simple as possible, so I won't implement cell alignment # The result I want >From points 3 and 4, here is what I'd like to see : | Header 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 | |----------|----------|----------| | content | content | content | | content | content | content | (2 rows) ***'|' at beginning and end of line are optional in markdown extra, but it seems as a consensus to always add them. You may challenge this choice, I'm open to discussion.*** >From the fireball project ( https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#backslash) and markdown extra (https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/#backslash), it seems we need to backslash escape all of those characters: ~~~ \ backslash ` backtick * asterisk _ underscore {} curly braces [] square brackets () parentheses # hash mark + plus sign - minus sign (hyphen) . dot ! exclamation mark : colon | pipe ~~~ # psql syntax to get that It feels to me that we should use the `\pset format` (or `-P` or `--pset=` in batch mode) syntax to tell psql we want markdown. So any of that one should provide a markdown output : - `psql -P format=markdown` - `psql --pset=format=markdown` - `\pset format markdown` (in psql prompt command) # Code to change If I want to code that patch, here are the files I think I'll need to change : - Documentation - doc/src/sgml/rel/psql-ref.sgml - src/bin/psql/help.c - Tests - src/test/regress/expected/psql.out - src/test/regress/sql/psql.sql - Code - src/bin/psql/command.c - src/bin/psql/tab-complete.c ***You're welcome to add any other file that I missed in that list!*** # What I'd like you to do First, thanks to have read that whole mail and sorry I didn't mean to make it so long... Then I'd like to know ***what you think about what I'm about to do*** before heading in a wrong direction. Have a nice day, Lætitia -- *Think! Do you really need to print this email ? * *There is no Planet B.*
