> On Apr 5, 2018, at 11:08 PM, Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com> wrote: > > On 4/1/18 03:27, Pavel Stehule wrote: >> I don't share option so CSV format should be exactly same like CSV COPY. >> COPY is designed for backups - and header is not too important there. >> When I seen some csv, then there usually header was used. > > I think in practice a lot of people use COPY also because it's a nice > way to get CSV output, even if it's not for backups. The options that > COPY has for CSV are clearly designed around making the output > compatible with various CSV-variants.
+1
From a user standpoint this was mostly how I use COPY. Someone requests a report that they can manipulate in $SPREADSHEET. I write a query, place it inside a “COPY” statement with FORMAT CSV, HEADER TRUE, save to file, and deliver. > Another thought: Isn't CSV just the same as unaligned output plus some > quoting? Could we add a quote character setting and then define --csv > to be quote-character = " and fieldsep = , ?
This makes a lot of sense. I’ve also generated CSV files using a combination of:
\f , \a \o file.csv
and then running the query, but if any of the fields contained a “,” if would inevitably break in $SPREADSHEET.
unfortunately, most used CSV separator in Czech Repuplic is ; due MS Excel settings for CR