Re: pg_dump -n schema -Fc has a DROP DATABASE command... confused

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 9:45 PM Wells Oliver <wells(dot)oliver(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> pg_dump -h host dbname -n schema -Fc > schema.dump
>
> Opening it in VIM brings up a binary file (compressed, sure) but it looks
> like this:
>
> Which contains the line "DROP DATABASE". Which is weird-- it does not drop
> the database, I mean, I restored from the same file. Why is this in there?
>
> Doing a text dump w/o -Fc yields a text file with no DROP statement.
>

The whole point of the custom format - which indeed defaults to compressed
mode (read the docs) - is to move any decisions about what to do during
restoring to the pg_restore commands. So, if the restore wants to drop the
database it has a drop database command available which it can execute. If
it doesn't that command will simply be skipped.

-Fp is a plain text format meant to be run via psql (or any other program
that can execute a basic SQL script - again, see the docs). Such a program
is not expected to specify restore conditions so whatever was defined
during the pg_dump will simply take effect.

David J.