> After re-reading what I just wrote to Andreas about how compression of > COPY data would be better done outside the backend than inside, it > struck me that we are missing a feature that's fairly common in Unix > programs. Perhaps COPY ought to have the ability to pipe its output > to a shell command, or read input from a shell command. Maybe something > like > > COPY mytable TO '| gzip >/home/tgl/mytable.dump.gz'; > > (I'm not wedded to the above syntax, it's just an off-the-cuff thought.) > > Of course psql would need the same capability, since the server-side > copy would still be restricted to superusers. > > You can accomplish COPY piping now through psql, but it's a bit awkward: > > psql -c "COPY mytable TO stdout" mydb | gzip ... > > Thoughts? Is this worth doing, or is the psql -c approach good enough?
To be honest, I don't see much benefit in it. You can already accomplish what you want to accomplish easily enough. If you want to muck with COPY, I'd like to see it accept a query as: psql -c "COPY select * from mytable where foo='bar' TO stdout" mydb | gzip ... ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly