Re: Executing Shell Command

Nicholas Walker wrote:
> I have been trying to execute a shell command from within postgresql

You ought to be using Version 1 calling conventions -- see:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/xfunc-c.html#AEN29226

The following works fine for me on RH9:

#define GET_STR(textp) \
DatumGetCString(DirectFunctionCall1(textout, PointerGetDatum(textp)))
extern Datum shell_exec(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(shell_exec);
Datum
shell_exec(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
char *cmd = GET_STR(PG_GETARG_TEXT_P(0));
int32 result;
result = system(cmd);
PG_RETURN_INT32(result);
}

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION xp_shellexec(text)
RETURNS int
AS '$libdir/shell_exec','shell_exec'
LANGUAGE 'C' VOLATILE STRICT;

SELECT xp_shellexec('mkdir /tmp/testing123');

[root(at)dev tmp]# ls -ld /tmp/test*
drwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4096 Nov 28 19:31 /tmp/testing123

HTH,

Joe