Re: psql scripting tutorials

Harald Fuchs wrote:
> In article <Pine(dot)GSO(dot)4(dot)64(dot)0809110111250(dot)244(at)westnet(dot)com>,
> Greg Smith <gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 9 Sep 2008, Artacus wrote:
>>> Can psql access environmental variables or command line params?
>
>> $ cat test.sql
>> select :TEST as "input";
>> $ psql -v TEST=16 -f test.sql
>> input
>> -------
>> 16
>> (1 row)
>
> Nice trick, but when I try the following variant:
>
> psql -v TEST=16 -c 'select :TEST as "input"'
>
> I get
>
> ERROR: syntax error at or near ":"
> LINE 1: select :TEST as "input"
>
> This seems to be contrary to the psql manual page:
>
> These assignments are done during a very early stage of start-up...
>
>

psql manual page:

-c command

--command command
Specifies that psql is to execute one command string, command,
and then exit. This is useful in shell scripts.

command must be either a command string that is completely
parsable by the server (i.e., it contains no psql specific
features), or a single backslash command. Thus you cannot mix
SQL and psql meta-commands with this option.