On 22nd of November Tom Lane committed patch by Roger Leigh which fixes my pet peeve:
Log Message: ----------- Improve psql's tabular display of wrapped-around data by inserting markers in the formerly-always-blank columns just to left and right of the data. Different marking is used for a line break caused by a newline in the data than for a straight wraparound. A newline break is signaled by a "+" in the right margin column in ASCII mode, or a carriage return arrow in UNICODE mode. Wraparound is signaled by a dot in the right margin as well as the following left margin in ASCII mode, or an ellipsis symbol in the same places in UNICODE mode. "\pset linestyle old-ascii" is added to make the previous behavior available if anyone really wants it. In passing, this commit also cleans up a few regression test files that had unintended spacing differences from the current actual output. Roger Leigh, reviewed by Gabrielle Roth and other members of PDXPUG.
Let's imagine, you have a record that contains new line characters, and also long lines, which get wrapped. In 8.4 it looks like this:
# \pset format wrapped Output format IS wrapped. # SELECT '1st', 'line', 'of text' UNION ALL SELECT '2nd', E'much longer\nand containing multiple lines, including, but not limiting to - a single long line - this one.\nand then something at the end', 'just a filler'; ?COLUMN? | ?COLUMN? | ?COLUMN? ----------+-----------------------------------------------------+--------------- 1st | line | OF text 2nd | much longer | just a filler : AND containing multiple LINES, including, but NOT l ; imiting TO - a single long line - this one. : AND THEN something at the END (2 ROWS)
This lack of column separator always annoyed me. But now, thanks to Roger, output of this query looks like this:
?column? | ?column? | ?column?
----------+-----------------------------------------------------+---------------
1st | line | of text
2nd | much longer +| just a filler
| and containing multiple lines, including, but not l.|
|.imiting to - a single long line - this one. +|
| and then something at the end |I don't know how about you, but I like it much better.
Of course the problem is non-existant if you use less for page, but if you don't like it, or you have problems with it – wrapped output with Roger patch is simply great.