pq:escapeLiteral does it need conn-db?

[gnusupport]

Does escaping really needs conn-db and why? Should not escaping be independent of connection?

Finally escaping function could be used to generate SQL without having a database connection.

[gnusupport]

(pq:escapeLiteral cf-db "\"") ⇒ "'\"'"
(sql-escape-string "\"") ⇒ "E'\"'"

I am using E'' notation, should not that be proper for pq:escapeLiteral in all cases? I remember some database warning appearing if there are escapes without E.

[gnusupport]

(pq:escapeLiteral cf-db "\\\\\\\\") ⇒ " E'\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'"

I have noticed also that space before E, should it be?

[anse1]

GNU Support writes:

Does escaping really needs conn-db and why? Should not escaping be independent of connection? Finally escaping function could be used to generate SQL without having a database connection.

yes, the functions PQescapeLiteral and PQescapeIdentifier need it, see https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/libpq-exec.html#LIBPQ-EXEC-ESCAPE-STRING The manual mentions error reporting and encoding reasons.

Additionally when escaping don't you think that E'' notation should be used?

I didn't implement the escaping, I just made the one in libpq available to the lisp world so I don't really have an opinion on the design decisions behind it...

``` (pq:escapeLiteral cf-db "\"") ⇒ "'\"'" (sql-escape-string "\"") ⇒ "E'\"'" ``` I am using E'' notation, should not that be proper for pq:escapeLiteral?

I don't care as long they both denote the same literal...

`(pq:escapeLiteral cf-db "\\\\\\\\") ⇒ " E'\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'"` I have noticed also that space before E, should it be?

Safer that way.

[gnusupport]

* Andreas Seltenreich ***@***.***> [2021-05-31 09:15]:

GNU Support writes: > Does escaping really needs conn-db and why? Should not escaping be independent of connection? > Finally escaping function could be used to generate SQL without having a database connection. yes, the functions PQescapeLiteral and PQescapeIdentifier need it, see https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/libpq-exec.html#LIBPQ-EXEC-ESCAPE-STRING The manual mentions error reporting and encoding reasons.

Thanks. I don't know what is "literal constants". In other words, is this function `pq:escapeLiteral` useful for continous escaping strings? Should I rather use that one or the one I made myself? The reference on the above link also says that in case of error it should return NULL. I was expecting this to return NULL, but it returns escaped "nil": (pq:escapeLiteral cf-db nil) ⇒ "'nil'" So maybe that is something to think about. Sometimes strings are nothing, like NIL and then they should be NULL. I do have several use cases for that. (sql-escape-string nil) ⇒ "NULL" So unless it returns "NULL" on NIL input, I cannot replace it. Other weird cases: (pq:escapeLiteral cf-db t) ⇒ "'t'" I don't think number should be converted to string, it would be better to fail. (pq:escapeLiteral cf-db 2) ⇒ "'2'" Description says: Perform literal value quoting on STRING... but anything may be given, not just a string. IMHO it should fail if it is not string and in some cases return NULL.