Re: pgbench - allow to store select results into variables

Hello Pavel,

Why you are introducing \into and not \gset like psql does?

Good question.

The \into syntax I implemented is more generic, you can send a bunch of queries together and extract the results, which makes sense from a client perspective where reducing latency is important:

   SELECT 1, 2 \; SELECT 3;
   \into one two three

However "gset" only works on the last SELECT and if all columns have a name. This feature probably makes sense interactively, but for a script it seems more useful to allow batch processing and collect results afterwards.

Also a more subjective argument: I do not like the gset automagic naming feature. I got more inspired by PL/pgSQL and ECPG which both have an "into" syntax with explicit variable names that let nothing to guessing. I like things to be simple and explicit, hence the proposed into.

--
Fabien.