Re: [PATCHES] Current-stream read for psql's \copy

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Also, I came upon this gem:
>
> $ echo '\\copy test to stdout' | psql -o /tmp/z test
> 444
> 444
> 444
> 444
> 444
>
> Seems 'copy to stdout' also has this split idea of sending \copy output
> to a different place from other output.
>
> I guess my big question now is why someone would use \copy stdin/stdout
> for reading input from the command stream when they can use COPY?

I think the idea was that you could have a program that does something
like (Perl):

my $fh = open('| psql -f commands.sql');
print $fh "1\ta\n";

Where commands.sql contains the \copy.

I'm not saying that was the original intention, but someone pointed out
you could do things that way, and I can see it might (rarely) be useful.

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd