Re: [SQL] bash & postgres

On Mar 23, 2009, at 7:05 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

> Erik Jones <ejones(at)engineyard(dot)com> writes:
>> On Mar 22, 2009, at 9:03 PM, Greenhorn wrote:
>>> How do I use \c (or any other psql commands beginning with a "\")
>>> in a
>>> bash script?
>
>> For multi-line input to a psql call in a bash (or any decent shell)
>> script, I'd use a here document:
>
> Or echo/cat the script into psql's stdin, if you prefer that type of
> notation. The reason you have to do this is that psql doesn't
> recognize
> backslash commands in a -c string. There's a school of thought that
> doesn't want us to allow multiple commands in a -c string, even.

Hmm... Apparently it does recognize them as long as the backslash is
the first character in the command string:

$ psql -c '\d' postgres
No relations found.
$ psql -c ' \d' postgres
ERROR: syntax error at or near "\"
LINE 1: \d
^

Is that expected behavior?

Erik Jones, Database Administrator
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