> Being able to do more conditional work in psql would make setting up more > robust scripts easier and without either losing transaction capabilities or > session pooling for improved performance when large numbers of small > commands are run in between flow control in done in bash.
Have you tried to script processes in shell using a single background psql process with which the shell code communicates using a pipe? I've long been curious about that approach, but never had a strong need enough to actually write the code. It should be possible.
I've envisioned and read up a bit on the approach but the cost-benefit hasn't yet made actually doing it worthwhile.
I do pretty much myself run all of the scripts I've been writing - the cost-benefit ratio is likely to change once they are turned over to a non-programmer to run.