[th3iedkid]

Isn’t hinting more like asking nicely than forcing the engine to choose the other way?

[FritsHoogland]

It's a bit of both. What pg_hint_plan does is change the cost to favour the hinted suggestion. If hinted suggestion is impossible, the planner will still perform something else.

[FritsHoogland]

But if 'force' means changing what it would do otherwise, where 'otherwise' is: a different plan having the lowest cost, the: yes that is exactly what it does.

[justinclift]

Yeah, I probably could have used better wording for the title submission.

The GitHub repo's wording is broken english currently though which is (probably?) worse.

[ioltas]

I’ll try to do something about that tomorrow, saw your ticket.

[justinclift]

No worries at all. :)

[pm90]

you can’t really do the latter.