Re: [SQL] Getting datatype before SELECT

>> Not at all sure how to do this from C, but from perl I do something like
>> this:
>>
>> $temp = `psql -d databasename -c "\\d tablename"`
>>
>> The item between the `s is executed and the result returned to the
>> variable. $temp now has the full structure of the table and can be
parsed
>> to extract the column names and types. The double \\ is needed to
prevent
>> perl from thinking that \d is a meta character (I think).
>>
>> The output of the command between the `s could also be redirected to a
>> file.
>
>In C he could do essentially the same thing. One approach is to use system
as
>so:
>
> system("psql -d databasename -c \"\\d tablename\" -o /tmp/somefile");
>
>And then he could open the file /tmp/somefile and parse his way through it.
>Also, he can do the what perl does to create pipes (perl is written in C)
and
>essentially do the same thing as you are doing. I personally would go with
>the temp file, using my proccess id to as part of the tempfile name to make
it
>unique to my process, but it should not be to much work to make the proper
>system calls to do the piping...james

Is that not what popen/pclose are for. i.e
FILE *f = popen("psql -d databasename -c \"\\d tablename\"","r");
...
pclose(f);