> >> I have a password on the database, so when the file is executed it prompt
> >> for the password.
>
> > You could try setting the PGPASSWORD environment variable in your
> > script. I believe someone told me it was getting set to go away,
> > though, so it may not help. If your OS supports it, ident over UNIX
> > domain sockets is more secure.
>
> PGPASSWORD is insecure on platforms where others can see your
> environment variables (which is quite a few Unixen, but not all).
> I am not sure we will remove it, but as of 7.3 it's definitely
> deprecated. You can put passwords in ~/.pgpass instead.
I think it could be a good idea to add an option which specifies which
file descriptor should be used for reading passwords?
Then shells could invoke programs like this:
psql -U xyz template1 --password-fd=4 < my_data 4< /the/password/file/you/want/to/use
And there would be no need to use any files for Perl/C/etc.
--
Antti Haapala