Update protocol doc to emphasize that backend can return

arbitrarily long strings, and frontends should cope gracefully.  Goes
along with long query and long error message changes...

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml
index bc03ecb55f61c19cc3ca2bde65ac5fc5172084cf..0416c94bad573caafd050a3dc0ad98cd4f3023c0 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml
@@ -657,17 +657,20 @@ This section describes the base data types used in messages.
 
 
        A conventional C '\0' terminated string with no length
-       limitation.  A frontend should always read the full string
-       even though it may have to discard characters if its buffers
-       aren't big enough.
+       limitation.
+       If s is specified it is the literal value.
+       Eg. String, String("user").
+
+       
 
 
-Is 8193 bytes the largest allowed size?
+There is no predefined limit on the length of a string
+that can be returned by the backend.  Good coding strategy for a frontend
+is to use an expandable buffer so that anything that fits in memory can be
+accepted.  If that's not feasible, read the full string and discard trailing
+characters that don't fit into your fixed-size buffer.
 
 
-       If s is specified it is the literal value.
-       Eg. String, String("user").
-