Re: postgres via shell scripts

On Fri, Oct 06, 2000 at 11:17:08AM -0400, bmccoy(at)chapelperilous(dot)net wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Mike Sears wrote:
> > Is there away to access a postgres database using a shell script, like bash
> > or korn?
>
> You can use
>
> psql -c <query>
>
> or
>
> psql -f <filename>
>
> to do command-line stuff inside of a script. But then you have to figure
> out how to parse the result. You're probably better off going the next
> step and using Perl.

i generally use:

psql -A -t -q -d database -c "sql query" > tempfile
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
echo command failed
exit
fi
awk -F\| -f script.awk tempfile
.....

there is a commandline options somewhere to change he field seperator, but
i forget it now.

you could do it all in one line and pipe the psql into awk/whatever.

but i've found that checking the return status of psql before actually using
the data is a useful thing. 8^)

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