On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, David Rowley <
dgrowleyml@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 18 Sept 2025 at 01:09, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> RETABLE just isn't a word. The code sometimes calls this a REWRITE of
> a table, which would be reasonable.
+1. I was reading this yesterday wondering why "REWRITE" didn't get a
mention.
Agreed.
The problem I have with REPACK is that "re" indicates that
something is being re-done that's been done before. If you're calling
REPACK for the first time on a table, that's not true.
As soon as you’ve written the first tuple you’ve begun “packing” the table - repack then is simply unpacking it and putting back the stuff you want to keep in possibly a structured way.
David J's "REBUILD" also seems ok. In a green field, you could then
have "REBUILD TABLE ..." and "REBUILD INDEX ..."
Rebuild has some prior art apparently, which makes it appealing. But I’m not a fan of the “shrink” usage the other products seem drawn to.
David J.
