On Wed, Apr 19, 2023 at 2:33 PM Melanie Plageman <melanieplage...@gmail.com> wrote: > As for alphabetical ordering vs importance ordering: while I do think > that if a user does not know what parameter they are looking for, an > alphabetical ordering is unhelpful, I also think the primary issue with > grouping them by "importance" is that it is difficult to maintain. Doing > so requires a discussion of importance for every new option added.
Not really. It's a matter that requires some amount of individual judgement, in some cases. It may require effort, but I think that that's likely to be worth it. I won't be the one that quibbles over every little thing. > For VACUUM, I'd perhaps suggest the options in alphabetical order > followed by table_name and then column_name and then putting the > parameter argument types at the end alphabetically. > > Of course, we could decide VACUUM is special and group its options by > importance because this is especially helpful for users. I think that > there are other SQL commands whose options' importance is not > particularly worth debating. That's very likely true -- it may be that most individual commands really wouldn't be any worse off if they just used a standard alphabetical order. I agree that consistency can be a virtue. But it's not the highest virtue. There will be a number of important exceptions, which will have outsized impact. VACUUM, ANALYZE, maybe CREATE INDEX. So if there is going to be a new standard, there should also be significant wiggle-room. Kind of like with the guidelines for rmgr desc authors discussion. -- Peter Geoghegan
