Michael Meskes <meskes(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
> Very early in its existance ecpg got an oracle compat hack that enabled
> it to do a connect with just the username and use the database as
> specified via PGDATABASE. It appears that this feature is not really
> used as it seems it segfault for quite some amount of releases.
> While trying ot fix it I found that the libpq function does not seem to
> look for the environment anymore.
Sure it does.
$ PGDATABASE=foo psql
psql: FATAL: database "foo" does not exist
$ PGDATABASE=template1 psql
Welcome to psql 8.0.0rc2, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.
...
regards, tom lane