Re: PGPASSWORD and client tools

Tom Lane wrote:

> It's deprecated because it's insecure, on platforms where other users can
>
>see the environment variables passed to pg_dump (which apparently is
>quite a few variants of Unix).  You wouldn't pass the password on the
>command line either ...
>
>Painful as .pgpass may be for an admin tool, I do not know of any other
>method I'd recommend on a multiuser machine.
>
>  
>
Another possibility would be to add a switch like --password-fd=n 
indicating an inherited file descriptor from which the password could be 
read.  That's not any easier than dynamic .pgpass, but it avoids
all filesystem permissions issues.