Suggestion for psql: --file -

Saluton,

wouldn't it be a good idea (and if it is, I am not sure what list to
post it to) to have psql's option -f / --file take "-" for stdin, as
many programs do?

In shell scripts this would facilitate using here-documents:

cat <<ASDF | psql --set ON_ERROR_STOP= -f -
insert into a (b,c) valyooz ('Caesar's victory'::tekst, 'Backslash \');
ASDF

This way you could have the benefits of -f (e.g. line information in
error messages) without the need of external files; if you simply omit
"-f -" in the above example, you do not get the information that the
error occurred on line 1.

Albert.


P.S: BTW, the man page (7.0.2) of psql is not very clear: it took me
some experimentation to find out that you have to do "\set VARIABLE"
interactively or give "--set VARIABLE=" to set a variable that does
not take a value.

-- 

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Albert Reiner                                   <areiner@tph.tuwien.ac.at>
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