Basically I need a way for my script to know if it needs to
abort because there were issues with the dump before it follows
through with the drop db...
Well, just checking the exit status from pg_dump ought to give you at
least a go/no-go indicator.If you want to be significantly more
paranoid, you could try the theory that *any* output to stderr is
indicative of a problem.
Thanks. I guess I just wasn't sure as to whether or not anything other than "bad" messages were written to stderr. Given the intent of stderr you wouldn't think so, but I've seen cases where it was so.