[Pkg-postgresql-public] /etc/postgresql/8.1/main/environment needs quotet strings

[Andreas Tille]

Hi,

I tried to set

     R_HOME=/usr/lib/R

in

     /etc/postgresql/8.1/main/environment

to get postgresal-8.1-plr working on my testing machine, but if I
do this

     /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.1

fails to start silently.  I found out that any slash '/' in the
string of the variable is responsible for this.  For instance if
I try

     R_HOME=_usr_lib_R

the server at least starts (well R does not yet work for sure).
If I need '/' in the variable string I have to do the following quoting:


     R_HOME='/usr/lib/R'

It took me a while to find this out and I personally would regard
this as a bug in parsing /etc/postgresql/8.1/main/environment.
Before filing a bug report I would like to ask for comments whether
there is some secret behind this behaviour.  The comment in this file
reads

# environment variables for postmaster process
# This file has the same syntax as postgresql.conf: 'VARIABLE=value',
# shell commands are not evaluated.

and thus the quoting might be intended but I would regard it as
unusual to quote the whole string.  If this is really needed for
some reason the comment should definitely be enhanced.

Kind regards

           Andreas.

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