On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 6:30 PM Paul Jungwirth <p...@illuminatedcomputing.com> wrote:
> I noticed that this runs your pager: > > psql -f <(echo 'select * from pg_class;') > > but not this: > > echo 'select * from pg_class;' | psql > > Indeed running the pager for -f but not stdin seems opposite of the last > line of these docs (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/app-psql.html): > > On the other hand, the variant using the shell's input redirection is > (in theory) guaranteed to yield exactly the same output you would have > received had you entered everything by hand. > > Does it seem wrong to anyone else to run the pager from -f? Is it > something the community would accept patches to change? > > If anything the behavior of the echo is contrary to the documentation (though I get your point about "yield exactly the same output"). For both examples: pager defaults to on the output of the psql session is a terminal the full contents of pg_class are not going to fit on one terminal screen ergo, the output of select * from pg_class; should be piped to the pager in both cases I'd be on board with having the documentation better match reality (if we can figure out why echo-pipe is different and it's something we control) but I'm against changing the longstanding behavior to an only subjectively different one. Seems like both setting pager to off and ON_ERROR_STOP to on should be the first things people do in their psql non-interactive automations (or run them through the "tee" command...). It would be nice to not have to change the pager but I also don't see messing with the default. David J.
